The Night Has A Thousand Eyes by Francis William Bourdillon

The night has a thousand eyes,
    And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
    With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
    And the heart but one:
Yet the light of a whole life dies
    When love is done.

The River by Sara Teasdale

I came from the sunny valleys 
And sought for the open sea, 
For I thought in its gray expanses 
My peace would come to me. 

I came at last to the ocean 
And found it wild and black, 
And I cried to the windless valleys, 
"Be kind and take me back!" 

But the thirsty tide ran inland, 
And the salt waves drank of me, 
And I who was fresh as the rainfall 
Am bitter as the sea. 

Drunken Morning by Arthur Rimbaud

Oh, my Beautiful! Oh, my Good!
Hideous fanfare where
yet I do not stumble!
Oh, rack of enchantments!

For the first time,
hurrah for the unheard-of work,
For the marvelous body!
For the first time!

It began with the laughter of children,
and there it will end.
This poison will stay in our veins even when,
as the fanfares depart,
We return to our former disharmony.

Oh, now, we who are so worthy of these tortures!
Let us re-create ourselves
after that superhuman promise
Made to our souls and our bodies at their creation:
That promise, that madness!
Elegance, silence, violence!

They promised to bury in shadows the tree of good and evil,
To banish tyrannical honesty,
So that we might flourish in our very pure love.
It began with a certain disgust, and it ended--
Since we could not immediately seize upon eternity--

It ended in a scattering of perfumes.
Laughter of children, discretion of slaves, austerity of virgins,
Horror of faces and objects here below,
Be scared in the memory of the evening past.

It began in utter boorishness,
and now it ends In angels of fire and ice.
Little drunken vigil, blessed!
If only for the mask you have left us!
Method, we believe in you!

We never forgot that yesterday
You glorified all our ages. We have faith in poison.
We will give our lives completely, everyday.
For this is the assassin's hour.

Her Kind by Anne Sexton

I have gone out, a possessed witch,   
haunting the black air, braver at night;   
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch   
over the plain houses, light by light:   
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.   
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.   
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,   
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,   
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:   
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,   
learning the last bright routes, survivor   
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.   
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.   
I have been her kind.

The Thirst for the Void by Charles Baudelaire

My soul, you used to love the battle's rumble. 
Hope, whose sharp spur once kindled you like flame, 
Will mount on you no more. Rest, without shame, 
Old charger, since at every step you stumble.

Sleep now the sleep of brutes, proud heart: be humble.

O broken raider, for your outworn mettle, 
Love has no joys, no fight is worth disputing. 
Farewell to all the trumpeting and fluting!
Pleasure, have done, when brooding shadows settle,

The blooms of spring are vanquished by the nettle.

As snows devour stiff corpses in their welter, 
Time wolfs my soul in, minute after minute. 
I've seen the world and everything that's in it, 
And I no longer seek in it for shelter;

Come, Avalanche! and sweep me helter-skelter.

The More Loving One by W. H. Auden 

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well 
That, for all they care, I can go to hell, 
But on earth indifference is the least 
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn 
With a passion for us we could not return? 
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn, 
I cannot, now I see them, say 
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky 
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

Dilemma by Richard Aldington

You asked me if you should still go adventuring
For more beauty, new lands, strange faces, 
For other moons and suns over other cities
And seas and forests you have never beheld; 
Or whether you should sit down quietly
And con over all you have gathered,  
Fingering your memories, counting your spoils, 
Letting each day pass without comment
Indistinguishably—a day only, a passage of hours,
Without one blood-beat of discovery or pain. 

How could I answer in words? 
In any case I am sick of words and talk. 
So I drew you silently to the window
Opening upon the spring twilight. 
There was a deep orange overglow from the sun, 
And a young moon with a star in her hand; 
The last swifts dashed screaming over the roofs, 
While the first bats swerved noiselessly across the square; 
There was a murmur of talk and of moving feet
As people strolled and met after work; 
A peasant's cart went by with a man driving
And a girl holding a candle in a paper shade, 
And someone played a mandoline. 

Were you answered? I do not know, 
For after a long silence you spoke of other things. 
But I do not know any other silence to give you.

Beauty Unpraised by Richard Aldington

There is only you.
The rest are palterers, slovens, parasites. 
You only are strong, clear-cut, austere;
Only about you the light curls
Like a gold laurel bough.

Your words are cold flaked stone,
Scentless white violets?

Laugh!
Let them blunder.
The sea is ever the sea
And none can change it,
None possess it.

Misery by Richard Aldington

Sometimes in bitter mood I mock myself: 
'Half ape, half ass, servant and slave, 
Where are your dreams gone now, 
Where your fierce pride?
Whither goes your youth?
And how will you dare touch again
Dear slender women with those disfigured hands? 
Or bare your long-dishonoured body
To the contemptuous sun?
How live after this shame?'

And all my answer:
'So that hate poison not my days, 
And I still love the earth,
Flowers and all living things, 
And my song still be keen and clear 
I can endure.'

Decisions by Darby Hudson

I'm always just a couple
of poor decisions away from 
a terrible life.
But I'm also just a
couple of poor decisions from 
stumbling across the
life of my dreams.

I Am! by John Clare

I am! yet what I am who cares, or knows?
     My friends forsake me like a memory lost. 
I am the self-consumer of my woes, 
     They rise and vanish, an oblivious host, 
Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost.
And yet I am—I live—though I am toss'd 

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, 
     Into the living sea of waking dream, 
Where there is neither sense of life, nor joys, 
     But the huge shipwreck of my own esteem
And all that's dear. Even those I loved the best 
Are strange—nay, they are stranger than the rest. 

I long for scenes where man has never trod, 
     For scenes where woman never smiled or wept; 
There to abide with my Creator, God, 
     And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept 
Full of high thoughts, unborn. So let me lie,  
The grass below; above the vaulted sky.

Walk the Line by Jimmy Osborne

Here's to the ones
Who play the part
With a smiling face 
But an aching heart

Who ride the wave 
But all the while 
They hide the pain
Behind a smile

This is to those 
Who face the rain
When the tide is high
And days are gray

Who walk the line 
To pave the way
To a better life
And brighter days

The Ship of Death by D.H. Lawrence

I

Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.

The apples falling like great drops of dew
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.

And it is time to go, to bid farewell
to one’s own self, and find an exit
from the fallen self.

II

Have you built your ship of death, O have you?
O build your ship of death, for you will need it.

The grim frost is at hand, when the apples will fall
thick, almost thundrous, on the hardened earth.

And death is on the air like a smell of ashes!
Ah! can’t you smell it?

And in the bruised body, the frightened soul
finds itself shrinking, wincing from the cold
that blows upon it through the orifices.

III

And can a man his own quietus make
with a bare bodkin?

With daggers, bodkins, bullets, man can make
a bruise or break of exit for his life;
but is that a quietus, O tell me, is it quietus?

Surely not so! for how could murder, even self-murder
ever a quietus make?

IV

O let us talk of quiet that we know,
that we can know, the deep and lovely quiet
of a strong heart at peace!

How can we this, our own quietus, make?

V

Build then the ship of death, for you must take
the longest journey, to oblivion.

And die the death, the long and painful death
that lies between the old self and the new.

Already our bodies are fallen, bruised, badly bruised,
already our souls are oozing through the exit
of the cruel bruise.

Already the dark and endless ocean of the end
is washing in through the breaches of our wounds,
already the flood is upon us.

Oh build your ship of death, your little ark
and furnish it with food, with little cakes, and wine
for the dark flight down oblivion.

VI

Piecemeal the body dies, and the timid soul
has her footing washed away, as the dark flood rises.

We are dying, we are dying, we are all of us dying
and nothing will stay the death-flood rising within us
and soon it will rise on the world, on the outside world.

We are dying, we are dying, piecemeal our bodies are dying
and our strength leaves us,
and our soul cowers naked in the dark rain over the flood,
cowering in the last branches of the tree of our life.

VII

We are dying, we are dying, so all we can do
is now to be willing to die, and to build the ship
of death to carry the soul on the longest journey.

A little ship, with oars and food
and little dishes, and all accoutrements
fitting and ready for the departing soul.

Now launch the small ship, now as the body dies
and life departs, launch out, the fragile soul
in the fragile ship of courage, the ark of faith
with its store of food and little cooking pans
and change of clothes,
upon the flood’s black waste
upon the waters of the end
upon the sea of death, where still we sail
darkly, for we cannot steer, and have no port.

There is no port, there is nowhere to go
only the deepening black darkening still
blacker upon the soundless, ungurgling flood
darkness at one with darkness, up and down
and sideways utterly dark, so there is no direction any more
and the little ship is there; yet she is gone.
She is not seen, for there is nothing to see her by.
She is gone! gone! and yet
somewhere she is there.
Nowhere!

VIII

And everything is gone, the body is gone
completely under, gone, entirely gone.
The upper darkness is heavy as the lower,
between them the little ship
is gone
she is gone.

It is the end, it is oblivion.

IX

And yet out of eternity a thread
separates itself on the blackness,
a horizontal thread
that fumes a little with pallor upon the dark.

Is it illusion? or does the pallor fume
A little higher?
Ah wait, wait, for there’s the dawn,
the cruel dawn of coming back to life
out of oblivion.

Wait, wait, the little ship
drifting, beneath the deathly ashy grey
of a flood-dawn.

Wait, wait! even so, a flush of yellow
and strangely, O chilled wan soul, a flush of rose.

A flush of rose, and the whole thing starts again.

X

The flood subsides, and the body, like a worn sea-shell
emerges strange and lovely.
And the little ship wings home, faltering and lapsing
on the pink flood,
and the frail soul steps out, into the house again
filling the heart with peace.

Swings the heart renewed with peace
even of oblivion.

Oh build your ship of death, oh build it!
for you will need it.
For the voyage of oblivion awaits you.

Deserts by Blaga Dimitrova

I was born for love- 
to give and to receive it. 
Yet my life has passed 
almost without loving. 
So I've learned forgiving:

even the deserts
I have crossed
I feel no scorn for.
I just ask them
with astonished eyes:

What gardens were you born for?

The Suicide by Jorge Luis Borges

Not a star will remain in the night.
The night itself will not remain.
I will die and with me the sum
Of the intolerable universe.

I’ll erase the pyramids, the coins,
The continents and all the faces.
I’ll erase the accumulated past.
I’ll make dust of history, dust of dust.

Now I gaze at the last sunset.
I am listening to the last bird.
I bequeath nothingness to no-one

Want by Joy Sullivan

They say men want freedom 
and girls want love, 
but I've seen women leave 
lovers and countries and kingdoms 
of comfort just for the chance 
to sleep unbothered, to bathe 
unwatched, to waltz around 
apartments all their own, 
wearing nothing but lipstick-
the color of desire.

Instead of Depression by Andrea Gibson

try calling it hibernation.
Imagine the darkness is a cave
in which you will be nurtured
by doing absolutely nothing.
Hibernating animals don’t even dream.
It’s okay if you can’t imagine
Spring. Sleep through the alarm
of the world. Name your hopelessness
a quiet hollow, a place you go
to heal, a den you dug,
Sweetheart, instead
of a grave.

Darkness by Lord Byron

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twin'd themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak'd up,
And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects—saw, and shriek'd, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

Be Drunk by Charles Baudelaire


You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is 
to it — it’s the only way. So as not to feel the 
horrible burden of time that breaks your back 
and bends you to the earth, you have to be 
continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. 
But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the 
green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of 
your room, you wake again, drunkenness already 
diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, 
the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, 
everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, 
everything that is singing, everything that is speaking 
. . . ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, 
clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! 
So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, 
be drunk, be continually drunk! 

On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”

TO THE LOVER WHO LEFT ME FLOWERS IN A PEPSI BOTTLE, APOLOGIZING FOR
HAVING NO VASE by Joseph Fasano

If this is the truth, I want it.

Listen: I have wasted 
my little life-
on spectacle, on golden lies, 
on dust.

I know now
what your hands knew
when you
did this:

Love
is the daily
bread, the make-it-work.

Touch me till this world is world enough.