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beware those quick to praise for they need praise in return beware those who are quick to censor they are afraid of what they do not know beware those...more

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I do think that poetry is important though, if you don’t strive at it, if you don’t fill it full of stars and falseness.

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when Whitman wrote, “I sing the body electric”I know what hemeantI know what hewanted:to be completely alive every momentin spite of the inevitable.we...more

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there are so many dayswhen living stops and pulls up and sitsand waits like a train on the rails.

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I felt like a still live fish on ice in a butcher’s counter on Friday morning.- On Cats

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Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.

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The cat is the beutiful devil. And here we can use the word, even without the “a.”- from a Dec. 21 1960, a letter to Sheri Martinelli"On Cats

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The factories, the jails, the drunken days and nights, the hospitals have weakened and shaken me like a mouse in the mouth of a hip-cat: life.- from a...more

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the impossibility of being humanall too humanthis breathingin and outout and inthese punksthese cowardsthese championsthese mad dogs of glorymoving th...more

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Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you're feeling bad, you just look at the cats, you'll feel better because they know that everything is just ...more

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There is a blue bird in my heart that wants to get out.

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Ya got cigarettes?” she asks. “Yes,” I say,“I got cigarettes.” “Matches?” she asks.“Enough to burn Rome.” “Whiskey?”“Enough whiskey for a Mississippi ...more

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that your power of commandwith simple language wasone of the magnificent things ofour century.(from the poem: result)

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Born into thisInto hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to dieInto lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guiltyInto a country...more

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where some god pissed a rain of reason to make things grow only to die,