dankbear

"What an ass you are!’ he said. ‘Are you so unobservant as not to have found out that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination? No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those."

"

moments of agony and moments of glory
march across my roof.

the cat walks by
seeming to know everything.

my luck has been better, I think.
than the luck of the cut gladiolus,
although I am not sure.

I have been loved by many women,
and for a hunchback of life,
that’s lucky

so many fingers pushing through my hair
so many arms holding me close
so many shoes thrown carelessly on my bedroom
rug.

so many searching hearts
now fixed in my memory that
I’ll go to my death,
remembering.

I have been treated better than I should have
been—
not by life in general
not by the machinery of things
but by women.

but there have been other women
who have left me
standing in the bedroom alone
doubled over—
hands holding the gut—
thinking
why why why why why why?

women go to men who are pigs
women go to men with dead souls
women go to men who fuck badly
women go to shadows of men
women go
go
because they must go
in the order of
things.

the women know better
but often chose out of
disorder and confusion

they can heal with their touch
they can kill what they touch and
I am dying
but not dead
yet.

"

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest -
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men -
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me."