where you go i will go where you stay i will stay

“Mother, he is a gentleman. He is a builder with bricks of moonlight. He knows the secret places of the earth. He washes the sleep from the eyes of the souls. He lets them look on beauty. He lets them tell him they hate him. In the mornings, I gather berries and apples. I scrub his back with rind. I weave spider-spit, eyelash. He talks in his sleep: pudding, fire, discus, the things he misses. He breathes, Your body is my orchard. I am undulating grass. I am a field of wheat he parts with his fingers. Poppies bloom in my veins. When he kisses me, he tastes pomegranate. The night crawls nearer. The moans of the dead roll and swell. Mother, we are well.”

Walt Whitman’s handwritten lines from his poem “To the States”

“It is a certain hill the one I imagine when I hear the word “hill” and if the apocalypse turns out to be a world-wide nervous breakdown if our five billion minds collapse at once well I’d call that a surprise ending and this hill would still be beautiful a place I wouldn’t mind dying alone or with you.”

“You get what anybody gets - You get a lifetime.”

“Inside her pulses something huge, something full of longing, something unafraid.”

“This mountain is a good mountain. The tornado will cross it. This river is a good river. The tornado will churn it. This yellow plain is a good plain. The tornado will raze it. This day is a good day. The tornado will black it. This house is a good house. The tornado will wear it. This man is a good man. The tornado will keep him.”

“i always cry when i grocery shop. lingering in the produce aisle, turning every fruit over in my hands to find the ones unmarked. i want to ask you if you can love damaged goods. i want to ask you if you’re scared of your father.”

“Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy? I don’t know if our life has a purpose and I don’t see that it matters. What does matter is that we’re a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass. […] We’re in the world, not against it. […] The world is, no matter how we think it ought to be. You have to be with it. You have to let it be.”

“This is a song about climbing a ladder up from hell… and the ladder’s really hot, because it’s roots are in hell, so it hurts your hands. But if you let go, then you will be back in hell. But on the other hand, if you are in hell, at least your hands aren’t burning. The rest of you is roasting, but at the same time, at least the pain is taken away from the immediate source of it. That’s what this song is about.”

“Even if you don’t believe in God, you have to believe in narrative. Things happen, one after another, world without end. Just because you’re self-aware doesn’t mean you can change what’s happening. Eventually someone is going to break your heart. Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking ‘I am falling to the floor crying’ but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it—you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well and when you’re having sex with your next lover on this very floor they will also notice that you didn’t paint it very well and they will think less of you for it. And then you think ‘Is that sentence too long?’ And then you have to hold the contradictions of sobbing uncontrollably and wondering about grammar in your head at the same time. I think if you are true to the entire experience, not just the sad part, you don’t risk sentimentality because you’re not overloading the experience with fake, melodramatic feeling. I also hear that whispering helps.”

“And many skies have covered me, And many winds have blown me forth, And I have loved the green bright north, And I have loved the cold sweet sea.”

                        I kneel into a dream where I                 am good & loved. I am                        good. I am loved. My hands have made some good mistakes. They can always                                                                                make better ones.