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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.

Richard Siken

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Richard Siken
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: February 15
Poet
New York City
New York
Feelings
Ends
Scars
Body
Scar
Something
Swear
Like
Search
Empty
Feeling
Taken

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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 wanted happiness, I can’t blame you for that, and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy but tell me you love this, tell me you’re not miserable.
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He was pointing at the moon, but I was looking at his hand.
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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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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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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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The light is no mystery, the mystery is that there is something to keep the light from passing through.
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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.
Richard Siken
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When you have nothing to say, set something on fire.
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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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Oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued.
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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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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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I woke up in the morning and I didn’t want anything, didn’t do anything, couldn’t do it anyway, just lay there listening to the blood rush through me and it never made any sense, anything.
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Moonlight making crosses on your body, and me putting my mouth on every one.
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?
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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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I am singing now while Rome burns.
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.
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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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