“Perhaps I am no one. True, I have a body and I cannot escape from it. I would like to fly out of my head, but that is out of the question.”

“Now I am going back And I have ripped my hand From your hand as I said I would And I have made it this far ...”

“The Witch's Life"When I was a childthere was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch.All day she peered from her second storywindowfrom behind the wrinkled curtainsand sometimes she would open the windowand yell: Get out of my life!She had hair like kelpand a voice like a boulder.I think of her sometimes nowand wonder if I am becoming her.”

“and God was there like an island I had not rowed to,still ignorant of Him, my arms, and my legs worked,and I grew, I grew,I wore rubies and bought tomatoesand now, in my middle age,about nineteen in the head I'd say,I am rowing, I am rowingthough the oarlocks stick and are rustyand the sea blinks and rollslike a worried eyebal,but I am rowing, I am rowing,though the wind pushes me backand I know that that island will not be perfect,it will have the flaws of life,the absurdities of the dinner table,but there will be a doorand I will open itand I will get rid of the rat insdie me,the gnawing pestilential rat.God will take it with his two handsand embrace it”

“She suffers according to the digitsof my hate. I hear the filamentsof alabaster. I would lie downwith them and lift my madnessoff like a wig. I would lieoutside in a room of wooland let the snow cover me.Paris white or flake whiteor argentine, all in the washbasinof my mouth, calling “Oh.”I am empty. I am witless.Death is here. There is noother settlement.”

“I am stuffing your mouth with yourpromises and watching you vomit them out upon my face.”

“I’ll put it out there: I am scarred by the nostalgic indicipherability of my own desires; I an engulfed by the intimidating unknown, pushed through darkness and dragged down by the irretrievable past sweetness of my memories.”