When you were born, you cried and everybody else was happy. The only question that matters is this: When you read more

When you were born, you cried and everybody else was happy. The only question that matters is this: When you die, will YOU be happy when everybody else is crying?

All pain is either severe or slight, if slight, it is easily endured; if severe, it will without doubt be read more

All pain is either severe or slight, if slight, it is easily endured; if severe, it will without doubt be brief.

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.
I am read more

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.
I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Don't tell me peace has broken out.

Don't tell me peace has broken out.

I have no regrets because I know I did my best -- all I could do.

I have no regrets because I know I did my best -- all I could do.

Shame and guilt are noble emotions essential in the maintenance of civilized society, and vital for the development of some read more

Shame and guilt are noble emotions essential in the maintenance of civilized society, and vital for the development of some of the most refined and elegant qualities of human potential.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus
With tigery stripes, and a face on it
Round read more

I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus
With tigery stripes, and a face on it
Round as the moon, to stare up.
I want to be looking at them when they come
Picking among the dumb minerals, the roots.
I see them already-the pale, star-distance faces.
Now they are nothing, they are not even babies.
I imagine them without fathers or mothers, like the first gods.
They will wonder if I was important.

It's the things I might have said that fester.

It's the things I might have said that fester.