#253

the boys i mean are not refined

they go with girls who buck and bite

they do not give a fuck for luck

they hump them thirteen times a night

one hangs out a hat upon her tit

one carves a cross in her behind

they do not give a shit for a wit

the boys i mean are not refined

they come with girls who bite and buck

who cannot read and cannot write

who laugh like they would fall apart

and masturbate with dynamite

the boys i mean are not refined

they cannot chat of that and this

they do not give a fart for art

they kill like you would take a piss

they speak whatever's on their mind

they do whatever's in their pants

the boys i mean are not refined

they shake the mountains when they dance

(id, 52)

#252

“let's start a magazine

to hell with literature

we want something redblooded

lousy with pure

reeking with stark

and fearlessly obscene

but really clean

get what I mean

let's not spoil it

let's make it serious

something authentic and delirious

you know something genuine like a mark

in a toilet

graced with guts and gutted

with grace”

squeeze your nuts and open your face

(id, 30)

#251

may i feel said he

(i'll squeal said she

just once said he)

it's fun said she

(may i touch said he

how much said she

a lot said he)

why not said she

(let's go said he

not too far said she

what's too far said he

where you are said she)

may i stay said he

(which way said she

like this said he

if you kiss said she

may i move said he

is it love said she)

if you're willing said he

(but you're killing said she

but it's life said he

but your wife said she

now said he)

ow said she

(tiptop said he

don't stop said she

oh no said he)

go slow said she

(cccome?said he

ummm said she)

you're divine!said he

(you are Mine said she)

(id, 21-22)

#250

“If you work in a bookshop then systematic theft is the obvious way forward for the ambitious autodidact” (Harsent, 2011: 12).

WROE, Nicholas and David Harsent (2011). “A Life In Writing” in The Guardian Review. London: Guardian News & Media.

#249

“I have called the Dichter the keeper of metamorphoses: but he is a keeper in a further sense as well. In a world of achievement and specialization, a world that sees nothing bu peaks, towards which one strives in a kind of linear focus that exerts all strength o the cold solicitude of the peaks which scorning and blurring the adjacent things, the many, the real things, which do not offer themselves for any help towards the peaks – in a world that prohibits metamorphosis more and more because it hinders the overall goal of production, which heedlessly multiplies the means of its self-destruction while simultaneously attempting to stifle whatever earlier human qualities are still extant – in such a world, which one might label the most blinded of all worlds, it seems of cardinal significance that there are people who, nonetheless, still keep practicing the gift of metamorphosis” (id, 161-162).

#248

“I feel distrustful of both the man who merely writes and the man who self-complaisantly still labels himself as a Dicther (...) For in reality, no man today can be a writer, a Dichter, if he does not seriously doubt his right to be one” (id, 157).

#247

“People are only defenseless only when they have no experience or no memory” (Canetti, 1986: 13).

CANETTI, Elias (1986). The Conscience Of Words. Translation by Joachim Neugroschel. London: André Deutsch Limited.

#246

“Our common destiny is the sum of our single lives, and each of these single lives is developing quite normally, in accordance, as it were, with its private logicality. We feel totality to be insane, but for each single life we can easily discover logical guiding motives. Are we, then, insane because we have not gone mad?” (id, 374).

#245

“Great is the fear of him who awakens. He returns with less certainty to his waking life, and he fears the puissance of his dream, which though it may not have borne fruit in action has yet grown into a new knowledge. An exile from dream, he wanders in dream” (id, 303).

#244

“When desires and aims meet and merge, when dreams begin to foreshadow the great moments and crises of life, the road narrows then into darker gorges, and the prophetic dream of death enshrouds the man who has hitherto walked dreaming in sleep: all that has been, all aims, all desires, flit past him once more as they do before the eyes of a dying man, and one can well-nigh call it chance if that road does not end in death.

The man who from afar off yearns for his wife or merely for the home of his childhood has begun his sleepwalking” (id, 292).

#243

“Men have no feelings, and too much brains is just as bad” (id, 213).

NO THANKS

TO

Farrar & Rinehart

Simon& Schuster

Coward-McCann

Limited Editions

Harcourt, Brace

Random House

Equinox Press

Smith & Haas

Viking Press

Knopf

Dutton

Harper's

Scribner's

Covici, Friede

(Cummings, 1998: 2)

CUMMINGS, E. E. (1998). No Thanks. Edited by Richard S. Kennedy. New York: Liveright.