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Here I am leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack, my silent night, just mash your lips against me. We are all going forward. None of us are going back.

Richard Siken

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Richard Siken
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: February 15
Poet
New York City
New York
Singing
Burns
Holy
Clue
Night
Rome
Back
Lips
Trying
Leaving
Going
Silent
None
Mash
Forward
Clues

More quotes by Richard Siken

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I'm battling monsters, I'm pulling you out of the burning buildings/ and you say I'll give you anything but you never come through.
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Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.
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You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back.
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I wouldn’t kill your pony. I’d like to believe it, anyway. I’d like to believe I wouldn’t drag you out in to the woods and leave you there, either. So far, it hasn’t come up.
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I sleep. I dream. I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly.
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He could build a city. Has a certain capacity. There’s a niche in his chest where a heart would fit perfectly and he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place – well then, game over.
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When you have nothing to say, set something on fire.
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I'm bleeding, I'm not just making conversation.
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Here I am in a rabbit run, here I am in a valley of pine, waiting for you to find me. I could pretend I’m speaking to everyone—assume a middle distance and transcend myself—but I’m taking to you and you know it.
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Wearing your clothes or standing in the shower for over an hour, pretending that this skin is your skin, these hands your hands, these shins, these soapy flanks
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He was pointing at the moon, but I was looking at his hand.
Richard Siken
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I am singing now while Rome burns.
Richard Siken
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You are playing cards with three Jeffs. One is your father, one is your brother, and the other is your current boyfriend. All of them have seen you naked and heard you talking in your sleep. Your boyfriend Jeff gets up to answer the phone. To them he is a mirror, but to you he is a room.
Richard Siken
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Oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued.
Richard Siken
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We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven, which brings us back to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it.
Richard Siken
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The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I’m alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling.
Richard Siken
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Do we simply stare at what is horrible and forgive it?
Richard Siken
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We laugh & it pits the world against us.
Richard Siken
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The light is no mystery, the mystery is that there is something to keep the light from passing through.
Richard Siken
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We can do anything. It’s not because our hearts are large, they’re not, it’s what we struggle with. The attempt to say Come over. Bring your friends. It’s a potluck, I’m making pork chops, I’m making those long noodles you love so much.
Richard Siken