Rich Ferguson
Photo by Cat Gwynn
“With my last dying breath, I will let out a sound; a seed of a love song growing under the tongue, sprouting into a howl, rising from my lips and into night, to halo the wild forever moon.”
writers
Charles Bukowski
this kind of fire
sometimes I think the gods deliberately keep pushing me into the fire just to hear me yelp a few good lines. they just aren't going to let me retire silk scarf about neck giving lectures at Yale. the gods need me to entertain them. they must be terribly bored with all the others and I am too. and now my cigarette lighter has gone dry. I sit here hopelessly flicking it. this kind of fire they can't give me.
Juicy Quote
A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?
fruit quote by Albert Einstein
“Eau de Bohemia” by Susan Hayden
(for Philomene Long, in beloved memory)
“It will be apparent that it is difficult
to discern which properties each thing
possesses in reality.”
(Democritus, 8th century B.C.)
If you were a perfume, it would be Earthy,
the top note a forest blend
that would descend into oakmoss
and fresh mown grass,
a mercurial bath of Irish whiskey.
It would smell like your dreams,
the ripening of first fruit
and bloodroot
with heart notes of orange groves;
Los Angeles,
before the permanent roads.
The dry down would reveal
cracked leather and lavender rose,
poetry and prose as a saltwater path
toward the Boardwalk sun;
at once a yearning and a leap
of heat meets alchemy.
Your scent would be worn
by both peasants and royalty:
Slaves to the half-open window,
queens beneath the arch of the doorway,
counting the days in sighs
while memorizing escape routes.
Eau de Bohemia:
A tenacious fragrance
with a lasting theme
and a dreamy aroma that lingers.
The wearer will feel signs and seasons.
The wearer will feel worthy of anointment,
with good reason.
© 2008
Charles Bukowski
“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum
Pablo Neruda
“Tonight I Can Write”
by Pablo Neruda
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.Write, for example, ‘The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another’s. She will be another’s. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
Pete Seeger – R.I.P.
“Love is…”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Fruit for Thought…
“Envy, like the worm, never runs but to the fairest fruit;
like a cunning bloodhound, it singles out the fattest deer in the flock.”
