There was a girl who flew the world from a lonely shore
Through southern snow to Heathrow to understand the law
There was a boy who loved the noise of the underground
He left the coast and overdosed on that London sound

He said,"I don't care if you're black or blue,
me and the stars stay up for you
I don't care who's wrong or right
and I don't care for the U.K. tonight so stay, stay"

And then one day she moved away from those garden walls
She left some flowers, he smoked for hours
She understood the law

Suede, Black or Blue

I, having loved ever since I was a child a few things, never having
wavered
In these affections; never through shyness in the houses of the
rich or in the presence of clergymen having denied these
loves;
Never when worked upon by cynics like chiropractors having
grunted or clicked a vertebra to the discredit of those loves;
Never when anxious to land a job having diminished them by a
conniving smile; or when befuddled by drink
Jeered at them through heartache or lazily fondled the fingers of
their alert enemies; declare

That I shall love you always.
No matter what party is in power;
No matter what temporarily expedient combination of allied
interests wins the war;
Shall love you always.


Edna St. Vincent Millay, Modern Declaration

"Don't you know it babe
I'm only half a body
Without your embrace"

Shakira, Your Embrace

art by hasama

Oh the werewolf, oh the werewolf
Comes stepping along
He don’t even break the branches where he’s gone
Once I saw him in the moonlight, when the bats were a flying
I saw the werewolf, and the werewolf was crying

Cryin’ nobody knows, nobody knows, body knows
How I loved the man, as I teared off his clothes
Cryin’ nobody know, nobody knows my pain
When I see that it’s risen; that fool moon again

For the werewolf, for the werewolf has sympathy
For the werewolf, somebody like you and me.
And only he goes to me, man this little flute I play
All through the night, until the light of day, and we are doomed to play

For the werewolf, for the werewolf, has sympathy
For the werewolf, somebody like you and me

Cat Power's cover of The Werewolf Song by Michael Hurley

More here: http://www.showstudio.com/project/dontbothertoknock/15218/16454

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head,
so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name,
like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables
like a charm, like a spell.

Falling in love
is glamorous hell; the crouched, parched heart
like a tiger ready to kill; a flame's fierce licks under the skin.
Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in.
hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine,
in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze,
staring back from anyone's face, from the shape of a cloud,
from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me

and I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are
on the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream.

Carol Ann Duffy, You

That crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,
Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling She knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.

No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, ‘O sea-starved, hungry sea.’

W.B.Yeats, A Crazed Girl

"My brief stay at the hospital had already convinced me that the medical profession was an open door to anyone nursing a grudge against the human race"

J.G. Ballard, Crash

I scare myself to death
That's why I keep on running
Before I've arrived
I can see myself comming

"Lucy was frightened, frightened near to death. Her voice choked, she could not breathe, her limbs went numb. This is not happening, she said to herself as the men forced her down; it is just a dream, a nightmare. While the men, for their part, drank up her fear, revelled in it, did all they could to hurt her, to menace her, to heighten her terror. Call your dogs! they said to her. Go on, call your dogs! No dogs? Then let us show you dogs!
You don't understand, you weren't there, says Bev Shaw. Well, she is mistaken. Lucy's intuition is right after all: he does understand; he can, if he concentrates, if he loses himself, be there, be the men, inhabit them, fill them with the ghost of himself. The question is, does he have it in him to be the woman?".

"...Indudablemente había muchos médicos, pensé, que, aun teniendo una mentalidad plenamente científica, no eran otra cosa que hombres de negocios y hablaban y actuaban como tales; mi padre, sin embargo, no era de esos. Para mí, dijo, debía de ser una continua tristeza acompañarlo, y por ello vacilaba casi siempre en llevarme con él a sus visitas, porque siempre resultaba que todo lo que él veia, tocaba o atendía era enfermizo y triste; se tratase de lo que se tratase, se movía en un mundo enfermo, entre gentes y personas enfermas; incluso cuando ese mundo pretendía o simulaba estar sano, estaba en realidad enfermo, y las gentes y las personas, incluso las pretendidamente sanas, estaban enfermas siempre. El estaba acostumbrado, dijo, pero a mi podía transtornarme e inducirme a reflexiones perjudiciales; precisamente yo, en su opinión, tendía siempre a dejarme transtornar por todo y por todos, de una forma que me hacía daño. Y lo mismo le ocurría a mi hermana, de un modo mucho más peligroso aún. No obstante, era un error, creía él, negarse a aceptar la evidencia de que todo era enfermizo y triste --dijo "realmente enfermizo y triste-- y, por esa razón, tarde o temprano "se sentía tentado" a llevarnos a mi o mi hermana en sus visitas. "Siempre hay un riesgo", dijo.

Thomas Bernhard, Transtorno
Art by Helnwein

"Besides some very vivid memories, including the one of the overwhelming desire I felt the day I helped her move, all Sumire left behind were several long letters... I read the letters so many times I nearly had them memorized. Every time I read them, I felt like Sumire and I were together again. This warmed my heart more than anything else could. Like you're riding a train at night across some vast plain, and you catch a glimpse of a tiny light in a window of a farmhouse. In an instant it's sucked back into darkness behind and vanishes. But if you close your eyes, that point of light stays with you, just barely, for a few moments"

Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

Wake up Maggie I think I got something to say to you
Its late september and I really should be back at school
I know I keep you amused but I feel Im being used
Oh Maggie I couldnt have tried any more
You lured me away from home just to save you from being alone
You stole my heart and that's what really hurt

The morning sun when it's in your face really shows your age
But that don't worry me none in my eyes you're everything
I laughed at all of your jokes my love you didnt need to coax
Oh, Maggie I couldnt have tried any more
You lured me away from home, just to save you from being alone
You stole my soul and that's a pain I can do without

All I needed was a friend to lend a guiding hand
But you turned into a lover and
Mother what a lover, you wore me out
All you did was wreck my bed
And in the morning kick me in the head
Oh Maggie I couldn't have tried anymore
You lured me away from home cause you didnt want to be alone
You stole my heart I couldnt leave you if I tried

I suppose I could collect my books and get on back to school
Or steal my daddy's cue and make a living out of playing pool
Or find myself a rock and roll band that needs a helpin hand
Oh Maggie I wish I'd never seen your face
You made a first-class fool out of me
But I'm as blind as a fool can be
You stole my heart but I love you anyway

Maggie I wish I'd never seen your face
Ill get on back home one of these days

Rod Stewart, Maggie
And the goddess Anita Pallenberg

"...-- ¿Y quién la pueda ver si aquí no hay nadie? He recorrido el pueblo y no he visto a nadie.
--Eso cree usted: pero todavía hay algunos. ¿Dígame si Filomeno no vive, si Dorotea, Si Melquiades, si Prudencio, el viejo, si Sóstenes y todos ésos no viven? Lo que acontece es que se la pasan encerrados. De día no sé qué harán; pero las noches se las pasan en su encierro. Aquí esas horas están llenas de espantos. Si usted viera el gentío de ánimas que andan sueltas por la calle. En cuanto oscurece comienzan a salir. Y a nadie le gusta verlas. Son tantas, y nosotros tan poquitos, que ya ni la lucha le hacemos para rezar porque salgan de sus penas. No ajustarían nuestras oraciones para todos. Si acaso les tocaría un pedazo de Padrenuestro. Y eso no les puede servir de nada. Luego están nuestros pecados de por medio. Ninguno de los que todavía vivimos está en gracia de Dios. Nadie podrá alzar sus ojos al cielo sin sentirlos sucios de vergüenza..."

Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo

But if I live and should you die for Ireland
Let not your dying thoughts be just of me
But say a prayer to God for our dearest island
I know He'll hear and help to set her free

And I will take your pike and place my dearest
And strike a blow, though weak the blow may be
Twill help the cause to which your heart was nearest
Oh Danny Boy, Oh, Danny boy
I love you so.

Sinead O'Connor's original third verse added to Danny Boy

"... What do you believe?
I know how to answer it now. What I believe is that we will kill each other, that we will hurt each other. We will destroy our neighbours and we will exile them. We will sell our children as whores. We will murder and rape and punish one another. We will keep warring and we will keep hating and we will believe that we are just and righteous and faithful. We will keep killing and selling one another and we will believe that we are just and fair and good. We will pursue pleasures and destroy one another in these pursuits. We will abandon our children. We will do all this in the name of God and in the name of our nature. We will create poverty and illness and we will create obscene wealth and the depravities that arise from it. We will think ourselves just and righteous, faithful and sane. We will hate and kill and piss and shit on one another. We will continue to do so. We will create Armageddon. In the name of God or in the name of justice or, simply, because we can. This is what I believe".

Christos Tsiolkas, Dead Europe
Art by Odd Nerdrum

"He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear."

William Faulkner, As I Lie Dying

I've got to tell you
how I love you always
I think of it on grey
mornings with death

in my mouth the tea
is never hot enough
then and the cigarette

dry the maroon robe

chills me I need you
and look out the window
at the noiseless snow

At night on the dock
the buses glow like
clouds and I am lonely
thinking of flutes

I miss you always
when I go to the beach
the sand is wet with
tears that seem mine

although I never weep
and hold you in my
heart with a very real

humor you'd be proud of

the parking lot is
crowded and I stand
rattling my keys the car
is empty as a bicycle

what are you doing now
where did you eat your
lunch and were there
lots of anchovies it

is difficult to think
of you without me in
the sentence you depress
me when you are alone

Last night the stars
were numerous and today
snow is their calling
card I'll not be cordial

there is nothing that
distracts me music is
only a crossword puzzle
do you know how it is

when you are the only
passenger if there is a
place further from me
I beg you do not go

Frank O' Hara, Morning

art by Margaret Keane

"To Mason, a particular sort of male beauty is everything. It doesn't exist in the world, but certain young actors and rock stars come reasonably close. Hence his art, which collages together extraordinary scraps of human matter, each body part carefully ripped from a photo or magazine, then glued down on a white sheet of paper and aligned with complementary fragments in painstakingly casual, Frankenstein-ish constellations. It's instinctive stuff. He can explain it in theoretical terms, but it's completely obsessive. Luckily for him, obsessive gay art is very trendy at the moment, so he makes a decent living. But his art's just about his own loneliness, period, whether collectors and critics understand that or not. He's building imaginary lovers, friends, sons, younger brothers, slaves, gods. It's a vaguely creepy thing, and it means a fucking ton to him, unlike his actual friends and acquaintances"

Dennis Cooper, Guide

"...Take this longing from my tongue
All the useless things these hands have done
Let me see your beauty broken down
Like you would do for one you loved..."

Leonard Cohen, Take This Longing