Memorable Passages

[BaitongBoy]

The Night I Was Going To Die


the night I was going to die
I was sweating on the bed
and I could hear the crickets
and there was a cat fight outside
and I could feel my soul dropping down through the
mattress
and just before it hit the floor I jumped up
I was almost too weak to walk
but I walked around and turned on all the lights
and then I went back to bed
and dropped it down again and
I was up
turning on all the lights
I had a 7-year-old daughter
and I felt sure she wouldn't want me dead
otherwise it wouldn't have
mattered
but all that night
nobody phoned
nobody came by with a beer
my girlfriend didn't phone
all I could hear were the crickets and it was
hot
and I kept working at it
getting up and down
until the first of the sun came through the window
through the bushes
and then I got on the bed
and the soul stayed
inside at last and
I slept.
now people come by
beating on the doors and windows
the phone rings
the phone rings again and again
I get great letters in the mail
hate letters and love letters.
everything is the same again.



- Charles Bukowski

[Boon Mee]

[Can123]

[BaitongBoy]

Don't Let That Horse


Don't let that horse
eat that violin

cried Chagall's mother

But he
kept right on
painting

And became famous

And kept on painting
The Horse With Violin In Mouth

And when he finally finished it
he jumped up upon the horse
and rode away
waving the violin

And then with a low bow gave it
to the first naked nude he ran across


And there were no strings
attached

- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

[BaitongBoy]

"When my husbandI don't think I'll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderfulAnn Druyan

[Mid]

Marc Chagall's "The Horse with Violin in Mouth"

The Horse With Violin In Mouth

for unknown reasons that piqued curiosity


chagall.jpg

http://www.paintersandpoets.com/2013...at-violin.html

[BaitongBoy]

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

[Boon Mee]

"From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality."

Ernest Hemingway

[BaitongBoy]

Frank's Wild Years

Well Frank settled down in the Valley
and he hung his wild years
on a nail that he drove through
his wife's forehead

he sold used office furniture
out there on San Fernando Road
and assumed a $30,000 loan
at 15 1/4% and put a downpayment
on a little two bedroom place

his wife was a spent piece of used jet trash
made good bloody marys
kept her mouth shut most of the time
had a little Chihuahua named Carlos
that had somekind of skin disease
and was totally blind

they had a thoroughly modern kitchen
self-cleaning oven (the whole bit)
Frank drove a little sedan
they were so happy

One night Frank was on his way home
from work, stopped at the liqour store
picked up a couple of Mickey's Big Mouths

drank 'em in the car on his way
to the Shell station, he got a gallon of
gas in a can, drove home, doused
everything in the house, torched it

parked across the street laughing
watching it burn, all Halloween
orange and chimney red then
Frank put on a top forty station
got on the Hollywood Freeway
headed north

Never could stand that dog

- Tom Waits

[BaitongBoy]

Where The Sidewalk Ends


There is a place where the sidewalk ends
and before the street begins,
and there the grass grows soft and white,
and there the sun burns crimson bright,
and there the moon-bird rests from his flight
to cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
and the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
we shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow
and watch where the chalk-white arrows go
to the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
and we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
for the children, they mark, and the children, they know,
the place where the sidewalk ends.



- Shel Silverstein

[BaitongBoy]

The Shooting of Dan McGrew

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back at the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.

When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the glare,
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog dirty, and loaded for bear.
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave, and scarcely the strength of a louse,
Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks on the house.

There was none could place the stranger's face, though we searched ourselves for a clue;
But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.

- Robert Service

[BaitongBoy]

The Cremation of Sam McGee

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

- Robert Service

[Boon Mee]

[BaitongBoy]

people who do not existWyndham Lewis

[Boon Mee]

The Naming of Cats

by T. S. Eliot