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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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Richard Siken
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: February 15
Poet
New York City
New York
Absence
Brings
Hero
Gentleness
Violence
Forgiven
Stars
Abundance
Comes
Touched
Back
Shoulders
Despite

More quotes by Richard Siken

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I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you've taken something out of me and I have to search my body for scars.
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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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I don't know where I end and the world begins. My best guess? Skin. It's the only actual boundary between the body and the world, between a body and any other body.
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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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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.
Richard Siken
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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?
Richard Siken
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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.
Richard Siken
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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.
Richard Siken
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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?
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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You’re falling now. You’re swimming. This is not           harmless. You are not                     breathing.
Richard Siken
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I sleep. I dream. I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly.
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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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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Moonlight making crosses on your body, and me putting my mouth on every one.
Richard Siken
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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.
Richard Siken
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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.
Richard Siken
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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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If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand.
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I'm bleeding, I'm not just making conversation.
Richard Siken