Quote

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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Richard Siken
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: February 15
Poet
New York City
New York
Speaking
Rabbit
Distance
Transcend
Taking
Rabbits
Middle
Valley
Waiting
Valleys
Everyone
Pretend
Running
Assume
Find
Assuming
Pine

More quotes by Richard Siken

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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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We laugh & it pits the world against us.
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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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You’re falling now. You’re swimming. This is not           harmless. You are not                     breathing.
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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 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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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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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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The light is no mystery, the mystery is that there is something to keep the light from passing through.
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When you have nothing to say, set something on fire.
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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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If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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I am singing now while Rome burns.
Richard Siken