“For without you, I swear, the townHas become like a prison to me.Distraction and the mountainAnd the desert, all I desire.”

“Be quiet now and wait.It may be that the ocean one,the one we desire so to move into and become,desires us out here on land a little longer,going our sundry roads to the shore.”

“You try to be faithfulAnd sometimes you're cruel.You are mine. Then, you leave.Without you, I can't cope.And when you take the lead,I become your footstep.Your absence leaves a void.Without you, I can't cope.You have disturbed my sleep,You have wrecked my image.You have set me apart.Without you, I can't cope.”

“God has allowed some magical reversal to occur,so that you see the scorpion pitas an object of desire,and all the beautiful expanse around itas dangerous and swarming with snakes.”

“All people on the planet are children, except for a very few. No one is grown up except those free of desire.”

“All day I think about it, then at night I say it.Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?I have no idea.My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,And I intend to end up there.This drunkenness began in some other tavern.When I get back around to that place,I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile,I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.The day is coming when I fly off,But who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?Who says words with my mouth?Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?I cannot stop asking.If I could taste one sip of an answer,I could break out of this prison for drunks.I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.I don't plan it.When I'm outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.We have a huge barrel of wine, but no cups.That's fine with us. Every morningWe glow and in the evening we glow again.”

“Without you the instruments would die.One sits close beside you. Another takes a long kiss.The tambourine begs, Touch my skin so I can be myself.Let me feel you enter each limb bone by bone,that what died last night can be whole today.Why live some soberer way, and feel you ebbing out?I won't do it.Either give me enough wine or leave me alone,now that I know how it isto be with you in constant conversation.”