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brave love, dreamnot of staunching such strict flame, but come,lean to my wound; burn on, burn on.

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This is newness: every little tawdryObstacle glass-wrapped and peculiar,Glinting and clinking in a saint's falsetto. Only youDon't know what to make o...more

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For me poetry is an evasion of the real job of writing prose.

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I am solitary as grass. What is it I miss?Shall I ever find it, whatever it is?

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The tongues of hell are dull.

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Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline. You've got to go so far so fast in such a small space; you've got to burn away all the peripherals.

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Nick and the CandlestickI am a miner. The light burns blue. Waxy stalactitesDrip and thicken, tearsThe earthen wombExudes from its dead boredom. Black...more

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The still watersWrap my lips,Eyes, nose and ears,A clearCellophane I cannot crack.

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Is it the sea you hear in me,Its dissatisfactions?Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?

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Its snaky acids kiss.It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults That kill, that kill, that kill.

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LADY LAZARUSI have done it again.One year in every tenI manage it--A sort of walking miracle, my skinBright as a Nazi lampshade,My right footA paperwe...more

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Stasis in darkness.Then the substanceless blue

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The blood jet is poetryThere is no stopping it.

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Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it

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I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps outLooking, with its hooks, for something to love.