The Flying Dream

You think you know tragedy when you wake from a flying dream
An afterglow too heavy to ascend.
And you remember what it looked like,
What it felt like when the sparks flew up:
Sinking deeper, deeper into dollops of duvet
As they drifted away to form one iris, two
Floating lanterns submerged beneath the sheets
That you cannot help but watch again, again
And again until you no longer fear drowning in fire,
For the only thing worth fearing is the power of the little breath,
Which can extinguish it all.
But you will know tragedy when you wake from a flying dream
And realise that you were not flying at all;
You were falling.

"Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives... and to the "good life", whatever it is and wherever it happens to be."

Hunter S. Thompson

"Sometimes it's easier to fall in love with cities than it is with people. Take, for example, New York - a monolithic tangle of skyscrapers and spires, or Paris - full of poetic details and varying shades of grey, or Chicago - windy and sunny summers with shiny windows reflecting the inherent bustle at stop lights. Places that hold special moments in time, suspended within the corner cafes and parking garages, lingering in old bookstores and taxi cabs, mingling with the smoggy air of the streets. My favourite memories are cradled within these sprawling human centres.

But what do you have to offer me? You're a person. You're a tangle of long limbs and a mop of messy brown hair. You're hardly a city. Yet, you gaze at me with those piercing eyes and I feel as vulnerable and exhilarated as I do in the streets of Manhattan - where the people passing by on the street and the windows of monolithic buildings are all silent, are all watching me. Perhaps you're my own private, portable, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Chicago, whatever."

Letters To Crushes

Curiosity

may have killed the cat; more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die--
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale
worth telling at all.

Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,
are changeable, marry too many wives,
desert their children, chill all dinner tables
with tales of their nine lives.
Well, they are lucky. Let them be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay
the cat price, which is to die
and die again and again,
each time with no less pain.
A cat minority of one
is all that can be counted on
to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell
on each return from hell
is this: that dying is what the living do,
that dying is what the loving do,
and that dead dogs are those who do not know
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

Alastair Reid

"Right now, there are people all over the world who are just like you. They’re lonely. They’re missing somebody. They’re in love with someone they probably shouldn’t be in love with. They have secrets you wouldn’t believe. They wish and they dream and they hope, and they look out the window whenever they’re in the car or on a bus or a train and they watch the people on the streets and wonder what they’ve been through. They wonder if there are people out there like them. They’re like you, and you could tell them everything and they would understand. And right now, they’re sitting here reading these words, and I’m writing this for you so you don’t feel alone anymore."

Goodmorning & Goodnight