Days Volume Two

* The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? This ... government — what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we must all allow. Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country fr

* Lay Your Sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm: Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral: But in my arms till break of day Let the living creature lie, Mortal, guilty, but to me The entirely beautiful. Soul and body have no bounds: To lovers as they lie upon Her tolerant enchanted slope In their ordinary swoon, Grave the vision Venus sends Of supernatural sympathy, Universal love and hope; While an abstract insight wakes Among the glaciers and the rocks The hermit's carnal ecstasy, Certainty, fidelity On the stroke of midnight pass Like vibrations of a bell And fashionable madmen raise Their pedantic boring cry: Every farthing of the cost. All the dreaded cards foretell. Shall be paid, but from this night Not a whisper, not a thought. Not a kiss nor look be lost. Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking

* Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts. Thanks for a continent to despoil and poison. Thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger. Thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin leaving the carcasses to rot. Thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes. Thanks for the American dream, To vulgarize and to falsify until the bare lies shine through. Thanks for the KKK. For nigger-killin' lawmen, feelin' their notches. For decent church-goin' women, with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces. Thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers. Thanks for laboratory AIDS. Thanks for Prohibition and the war against drugs. Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind the own business. Thanks for a nation of finks. Yes, thanks for all the memories-- all right let's see your arms! You always were a headache and you always were a bore. Thanks for the last and greatest betra

* I can travel faster than light so can you the speed of thought the only trouble is at destinations our thought balloons are coated invisible no one there sees us and we can’t get out to be real or present phone and videophone are almost worse we don’t see a journey but stay in our space just talking and joking with those we reach but can never touch the nothing that can hurt us how lovely and terrible and lonely is this Les Murray His career was a shocking request for action, for love, to restore old memories, embrace young faces, to regret and move forward. He wasn't ashamed, just bewildered. The mark of the devil had been upon him. All was not lost, but he was shattered by the changes that had occurred, not just in his own physical form but in the way people related to him, for the activity that was being discouraged, for the shattered flints that made up each waking moment. The traffic jam was 20 miles long, he swore. Thankfully they were heading the other way, in a taxi comin

* Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good. The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone. From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; "I will be true to the wife, I'll concentrate more on my work," And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the deaf, Who can speak for the dumb? All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-

* Born Sandy Devotional Such a sweet girl to me I'll do what I can now To love her to dust For dust is what we all shall be Born Sandy Devotional All that I ever knew Don’t know the wrong of that Don’t know the good Sticks like hot tar to the sole of my shoe On yellow hood of her car with salt knots in her hair And some cards and some chicken and beer We can’t mess about We kiss until... Kiss until she has to leave We’re born Sandy Devotional All that I ever knew Don’t know the wrong of that Don’t know the good Both of them ugly, both of them true I don’t want to hear no gossip or chat No Bill or Pete, Kevin or Sam They were just poison They don’t mean a thing Burn up in my spit Like the fat in the pan Born Sandy Devotional Born under alternate stars Born to be Sandy’s confessional Burning like that to be trapped in her eyes We go for a swim And we wash it all off And hope that it leaves us alone But with each fresh kiss Blood wells up again Dries on top of skin And eats into the