I think the poet is the last person who is still speaking the truth when no one else dares to. I think the poet is the first person to begin the shaping and visioning of the new forms and the new consciousness when no one else has begun to sense it I think these are two of the most essential human functions.

In the fifties… we were so busy being cool that we didn’t know how to say the word love

The only war is the war against the imagination.

It is still news to her that passion could steer her wrong though she went down, a thousand times strung out across railroad tracks, off bridges under cars, or stiff glass bottle still in hand, hair soft on greasy pillows, still it is news she cannot follow love (his burning footsteps in blue crystal snow) & still come out all right.

More or Less Love Poems #11: No babe We'd never Swing together but the syncopation would be something wild

I have just realized that the stakes are myself I have no other ransom money, nothing to break or barter but my life