Your Way

"Why, gentlemen, if you know neither the road you are going, nor where you are, nor the road you came, the first thing I have to inform you is, that -you have lost your way."
(Tony in 'She Stoops To Conquer')

Magic Powers

"There are other fantasies involving magic powers, impossible wealth, and the ability to sing and dance. Though I can hypnotize the mafia and raise the dead at will, I seem incapable of erasing the circles beneath my eyes. My dramas don't help me sleep, they simply allow me to pretend that I'm somebody else, someone who's not lying saucer-eyed on a sweat-drenched mattress, watching the minutes flap forward and awaiting the dawn of another dry day."
(D. Sedaris)

Hard Rain

"I'm a goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a fallin',
I'll walk to the depth of the depest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',

But I'll know my song well before I start singing',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a gonna fall."
(B. Dylan)

How Long

How long, how long has that evenin' train been gone?
How long, how long, baby how long?
Heard the whistle blowin' couldn't see no train.
Way down in my heart I had an achin' pain.
How long, how long, baby how long?
I'm sad and lonely all the whole day through.
Why don't you write me and give me the news?
You left me, left me singin' those how long blues.
(Leroy Carr)

No Particular Place To Go

"Riding along in my calaboose,
Still trying to get her belt unloose.
All the way home I held a grudge,
For the safety belt that wouldn't budge.
Cruising and playing the radio,
With no particular place to go."
(C. Berry)

The Day

The day was a year at first
When children ran in the garden;
The day shrank down to a month
When the boys played ball.

The day was a week thereafter
When young men walked in the garden;
The day was itself a day
When love grew tall.

The day shrank down to an hour
When old men limped in the garden;
The day will last forever
When it is nothing at all.
(Theodore Spencer)

Beyond

"...Then will one say that the days are growing crisp
again, the other that the leaves are turning,
And will they say good-bye, good-bye, you must look
me up some time, good-bye,
Then turn and go, each of them thinking, and yet,
and yet,..."
(excerpt from 'Requiem', Kenneth Fearing)

March 24, '69

La puerta escondida
no es escondida
La puerta al invisible
no es invisible
The hidden door
is not hidden
I continually walk through it
not seeing it
And I am what I am
And will be what I will be
Sobre las playas perdidas
del Sur.....
(excerpt from "The Mexican Night" Ferlinghetti)