Quote

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

Richard Siken

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Richard Siken
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: February 15
Poet
New York City
New York
Clothes
Shower
Hours
Showers
Hands
Pretending
Wearing
Skin
Skins
Hour
Shins
Standing
Flanks

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Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars for you? That I would take you there? The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube?
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Fairy tales have rules. You are a princess or you aren’t. You are pure at heart or you aren’t. If you are pure at heart, or lucky, you might catch a break.
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When you have nothing to say, set something on fire.
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We laugh & it pits the world against us.
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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.
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You’re falling now. You’re swimming. This is not           harmless. You are not                     breathing.
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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.
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Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down. I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure, I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow glass, but that comes later.
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Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake and dress them in warm clothes again.
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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.
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Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine. I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.
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The light is no mystery, the mystery is that there is something to keep the light from passing through.
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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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Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.
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The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell. Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.
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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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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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Do we simply stare at what is horrible and forgive it?
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I’m not suggesting the world is good, that life is easy, or that any of us are entitled to better. But please, isn’t this the kind of thing you talk about in somber tones, in the afternoon, with some degree of hope and maybe even a handful of strategies?
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Moonlight making crosses on your body, and me putting my mouth on every one.
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