“I felt like crying but nothing came out. It was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can’t feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. But I think I have known it pretty often, too often.”
Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk- real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.
“
A pain stabbed my heart as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world
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…-no girl had ever moved me with a story of spiritual suffering and so beautifully her soul showing out radiant as an angel wandering in hell and the hell the selfsame streets I’d roamed in watching, watching for someone just like her and never dreaming the darkness and the mystery and eventuality of our meeting in eternity,
“
| — | Jack Kerouac |
The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.
“
| — | Jack Kerouac |
What is the feeling when you’re driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? -it’s the too huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.
“
| — | Jack Kerouac |
My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.
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| — | Jack Kerouac |
It was just the sort of naïve wisdom that comes from growing up with people, having their lives become entwined in yours. And then one day, you realize that, even though in some ways, you’re still connected, in another way, all the strings have been cut. I still love those people, who helped me define myself, but… it isn’t the same. Everything is probably just as it should be, and yet… it can never be the way it was then.
How Many Days Until Summer?
Did I ever leave you? You let me go. Was I supposed to restrain you here, hold you down, tie you up? Should I have begged you “stay”, chanted “please”, cried out “don’t”? I haven’t moved a muscle, budged an inch, shaken off the yoke of you and your needs and your wants and your dreams, I’m still bound to you by a devotion that smells of blood and liquor and third grade promises and it’s like a leash and it’s round my neck and it’s getting tight and you’re running away too fast, it’s become a noose and you’re hanging me and you think you need me, but it’s the other way around. It always has been.
I felt special for a few golden moments. Honey suckle colored blobs of time. Drip drop. Smaller and smaller these pools of happiness became. Drought. Just the same old me again.
I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.
“
You are beautiful like demolition. Just the thought of you draws my knuckles white. I don’t need a god. I have you and your beautiful mouth, your hands holding onto me, the nails leaving unfelt wounds, your hot breath on my neck. The taste of your saliva. The darkness is ours. The nights belong to us. Everything we do is secret. Nothing we do will ever be understood; we will be feared and kept well away from. It will be the stuff of legend, endless discussion and limitless inspiration for the brave of heart. It’s you and me in this room, on this floor. Beyond life, beyond morality. We are gleaming animals painted in moonlit sweat glow. Our eyes turn to jewels and everything we do is an example of spontaneous perfection. I have been waiting all my life to be with you. My heart slams against my ribs when I think of the slaughtered nights I spent all over the world waiting to feel your touch. The time I annihilated while I waited like a man doing a life sentence. Now you’re here and everything we touch explodes, bursts into bloom or burns to ash. History atomizes and negates itself with our every shared breath. I need you like life needs life. I want you bad like a natural disaster. You are all I see. You are the only one I want to know.
“
| — | Henry Rollins |
When I reached here my hand stops. Someone asks: "Tell me, why, like waves on a single coast, do your words endlessly go and return to her body? Is she the only form that you love?" And I answer: "My hands never tire of her, my kisses do not rest, why should I withdraw the words that repeat the trace of her beloved contact, words that close, uselessly holding like water in a net the surface and the temperature of the purest wave of life?" And, love, your body is not only the rose that in shadow or moonlight rises, it is not only movement or burning, act of blood or petal of fire, but to me you have brought my territory, the clay of my childhood, the waves of oats, the round skin of the dark fruit that I tore from the forest, aroma of wood and apples, color of hidden water where secret fruits and deep leaves fall. Oh love, your body rises like the pure line of a goblet from the earth that knows me and when my senses found you you throbbed as though within you rain and seeds were falling. Ah let them tell me how I could abolish you and let my hands without your form tear the fire from my words. My gentle one, rest your body in these lines that owe you more than you give me through your touch, live in these words and repeat in them the sweetness and the fire, tremble amid their syllables, sleep in my name as you have slept upon my heart, and so tomorrow my words will keep the hollow of your form and he who hears them one day will receive a gust of wheat and poppies; the body of love will still be breathing upon earth!
My wild girl, we have had to regain time and march backward, in the distance of our lives, kiss after kiss, gathering from one place what we gave without joy, discovering in another the secret road that gradually brought your feet close to mine, and so beneath my mouth you see again the unfulfilled plant of your life putting out its roots toward my heart that was waiting for you. And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us. The light of each day, its flame or its repose, they deliver to us, taking them from time, and so our treasure is disinterred in shadow or light, and so our kisses kiss life: all love is enclosed in our love: all thirst ends in our embrace. Here we are at last face to face, we have met, we have lost nothing. We have felt each other lip to lip, we have changed a thousand times between us death and life, all that we were bringing like dead medals we threw to the bottom of the sea, all that we learned was of no use to us: we begin again, we end again death and life. And here we survive, pure, with the purity that we created, broader than the earth that could not lead us astray, eternal as the fire that will burn as long as life endures.
Night On The Island
All night I have slept with you next to the sea, on the island. Wild and sweet you were between pleasure and sleep, between fire and water. Perhaps very late our dreams joined at the top or at the bottom, up above like branches moved by a common wind, down below like red roots that touch. Perhaps your dream drifted from mine and through the dark sea was seeking me as before, when you did not yet exist, when without sighting you I sailed by your side, and your eyes sought what now- bread, wine, love, and anger- I heap upon you because you are the cup that was waiting for the gifts of my life. I have slept with you all night long while the dark earth spins with the living and the dead, and on waking suddenly in the midst of the shadow my arm encircled your waist. Neither night nor sleep could separate us. I have slept with you and on waking, your mouth, come from your dream, gave me the taste of earth, of sea water, of seaweed, of the depths of your life, and I received your kiss moistened by the dawn as if it came to me from the sea that surrounds us.
