Osiris Oliphant > Osiris's Quotes

“effect the exchange of labor and services by means of an exchange of heartbeats. estimate every task in terms of heartbeats-the monetary unit of the future, in which all individuals are equally wealthy.”
― Velimir Khlebnikov

“Whatever I take, I take too much or too little; I do not take the exact amount. The exact amount is no use to me.”
― Antonio Porchia, Voces Completas / Gesammelte Stimmen

“America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil. Before the settlers, before the Indians... the evil was there... waiting.”
― William S. Burroughs

“I am an intellectual thug who has been slowly accumulating a private arsenal with every intention of using it. In a mindless age every insight takes on the character of a lethal weapon. Every man of good will is the enemy of society.”
― Marshall McLuhan

“If our life lacks a constant magic it is because we choose to observe our acts and lose ourselves in consideration of their imagined form and meaning, instead of being impelled by their force.”
― Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double

“it only looks like crap,
its actually quite flavorless”
― bill mcneal

“The sky is an enormous man.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg

“A magic spell to protect you from
snake bites, evil enemies,
and all the healed wounds

Five for black vespers, three for the priest, hurry to the church and arrive on time, ten for the bronze thread, and for the red mare, how the water maddens with a backward wind, six for the witches next to the well, ferry them across with his one arm lost, thirteen for the shipper and again for the saint, up and down the dungeon the eleven ladies pace, and one for the son of the dragon sire, watch him, he will drown them in a rotten skiff.”
― Jenny Mastoraki, The Rehearsal of Misunderstanding: Three Collections by Contemporary Greek Women Poets

“[Death] was not at home by that time, he was in his yam garden.”
― Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard

“To speak frankly, the family bond in the civilized regime causes fathers to desire the death of their children and children to desire the death of their fathers.”
― Charles Fourier

“You are my song, my dark blue dream
Of doves, of winter's drowsy drone,
And sleighs that slow and golden go
Through gray blue shadows on the snow.”
― Velimir Khlebnikov

“I AM ROWING (a hex poem)

i have cursed your forehead, your belly, your life
i have cursed the streets your steps plod through
the things your hands touch
i have cursed the inside of your dreams

i have placed a puddle in your eye so that you cant see anymore
an insect in your ear so that you cant hear anymore
a sponge in your brain so that you cant understand
anymore

i have frozen you in the soul of your body
iced you in the depths of your life
the air you breathe suffocates you
the air you breathe has the air of a cellar
is an air that has already been exhaled
been puffed out by hyenas

the dung of this air is something no one can breathe
your skin is damp all over
your skin sweats out waters of great fear
your armpits reak far and wide of the crypt

animals drop dead as you pass
dogs howl at night their heads raised toward your house
you cant run away
you cant muster the strength of an ant to the tip of your feet

your fatigue makes a lead stump in your body
your fatigue is a long caravan
your fatigue stretches out to the country of nan
your fatigue is inexpressible

your mouth bites you
your nails scratch you
no longer yours, your wife
no longer yours, your brother
the sole of his foot bitten by an angry snake

someone has slobbered on your descendents
someone has drooled in the mouth of your laughing little girl
someone has walked by slobbering all over the face of your domain

the world moves away from you

i am rowing

i am rowing

i am rowing against your life

i am rowing

i split into countless rowers
to row more strongly against you

you fall into blurriness
you are out of breath
you get tired before the slightest effort

i row

i row

i row

you go off drunk tied to the tail of a mule
drunkenness like a huge umbrella that darkens the sky
and assembles the flies

dizzy drunkenness of the semicircular canals
unnoticed beginnings of hemiplegia

drunkeness no longer leaves you
lays you out to the left
lays you out to the right
lays you out on the stony ground of the path

i row
i row
i am rowing against your days

you enter the house of suffering

i row
i row

on a black blinfold your life is unfolding
on the great white eye of a one eyed horse
your future is unrolling

I AM ROWING”
― Henri Michaux

“I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide,
As being past away.—Vain sympathies!
For, backward, Duddon! as I cast my eyes,
I see what was, and is, and will abide;
Still glides the Stream, and shall for ever glide;
The Form remains, the Function never dies;
While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,
We Men, who in our morn of youth defied
The elements, must vanish;—be it so!
Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour;
And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,
Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,
We feel that we are greater than we know.”
― William Wordsworth

“To Time. (1615)

Thou Register of old Antiquities,
Observer of the worlds iniquities,
Surveying life from birth till Death intoombe,
From Adam's making, to the day of doom:
That in thy restless cunning dost admit
Of actions lawful, or of things unfit,
And hast thy head behind of purpose ball'd,
Because thou never wilt be back recall'd;
But wear'st a lock before I understand,
On which I never yet could lay my hand.
I have expected (thou grave ancient father)
Thy helping hand, and I protest the rather,
Because they say that Time by turns doth go,
And hitherto I have not found it so:
Therefore for some good turn, one of these days,
I challenge thee, or I'll disprove thy praise,
And I write of thee according as I find,
That thorow age thou art both ball'd and blind;
Find out a time, good Time, for to relieve me,
For at this time, Time very bad doth grieve mee.”
― Samuel Rowlands, The Melancholie Knight

“...beneath the temple of Emesa there is a system of special sewers wherein the human blood rejoins the plasma of certain animals. Through these sewers, coiling into broiling corkscrews whose circles diminish the further they descend to the depths of the earth, the blood of those sacrificed according to the needful rites will find its way back to the geological seams, the congealed cracks of chaos. This pure blood, thinned and refined by the rituals, and rendered acceptable to the god of the underworld, splashes the groaning deities of Erebus, whose breath finally purifies it.”
― Antonin Artaud, Heliogabalus; or, the Crowned Anarchist

“I started out to be honest,
with everything on the square.
But a man can't fool with the Golden Rule
in a crowd that won't play fair.

You don't go down with a hard, short fall,
you just sort of shuffle along.
And loosen your load of the moral code,
'till you can't tell right from wrong.”
― Clarence Leonard Hay

“The Reason for Skylarks

It was nearly morning when the giant
Reached the tree of children.
Their faces shone like white apples
On the cold dark branches
And their dresses and little coats
Made sodden gestures in the wind.

He did not laugh or weep or stamp
His heavy feet. He set to work at once
Lifting them tenderly down
Into a straw basket which was fixed
By a golden strap to his shoulder.
Only one did he drop - a soft pretty child
Whose hair was the color of watered milk.
She fell into the long grass
And he could not find her
Though he searched until his fingers
Bled and the full light came.

He shook his fist at the sky and called
God a bitter name.
But no answer was made and the giant
Got down on his knees before the tree
And putting his hands about the trunk
Shook
Until all the children had fallen
Into the grass. Then he pranced and stamped
Them to jelly. And still he felt no peace.
He took his half-full basket and set it afire,
Holding it by the handle until
Everything had been burned. He saw now
Two men on steaming horses approaching
From the direction of the world
And taking a little silver flute
Out of his pocket he played tune
After tune until they came up to him.”
― Kenneth Patchen

“Besides shooting out a big blank from your buttock, you can feel as if your root chakra leaked sweet hot mucus. ”
― Hiroyuki Nishigaki, How to Good-Bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?

“Ordinary philosophy is like a hound hunting his own tail. The more he hunts the farther he has to go, and his nose never catches up with his heels, because it is forever ahead of them. So the present is already a foregone conclusion, and I am ever too late to understand it...The truth is that we travel on a journey that was accomplished before we set out; and the real end of philosophy is accomplished, not when we arrive at, but when we remain in, our destination (being already there)—which may occur vicariously in this life when we cease our intellectual questioning”
― Benjamin Paul Blood

“It seems to be a requirement of great and powerful magicians that they live on public assistance.”
― Francis King

“All writing is garbage. People who come out of nowhere to try and put into words any part of what goes on in their minds are pigs. ”
― Antonin Artaud

“~Enueg II

world world world
and the face grave
cloud against the evening

de moriturus nihil nisi

and the face crumbling shyly
too late to darken the sky
blushing away into the evening
shuddering away like a gaffe

veronica mundi
veronica munda
give us a wipe for the love of Jesus

sweating like Judas
tired of dying
tired of policemen
feet in marmalade
perspiring profusely
heart in marmalade
smoke more fruit
the old heart the old heart
breaking outside congress
doch I assure thee
lying on O'Connell Bridge
gogglin at the tulips of the evening
the green tulips
shining round the corner like an anthrax
shining on Guinness's barges

the overtone the face
too late to brighten the sky
doch doch I assure thee”
― Samuel Beckett

“God had poked His finger down into my nerves and gently, almost without thinking, brought a little confusion among those threads. And God had pulled His finger back, and behold--there were filaments and fine rootlike threads on His finger from the threads of my nerves. And there remained an open hole behind His finger which was the finger of God, and a wound in my brain behind the path of His finger.
But after God had touched me with the finger of His hand, He let me be and touched me no more and let nothing evil come upon me. He let me depart in peace and He let me depart with the open hole. And nothing evil will come upon me from God who is the Lord through all Eternity....”
― Knut Hamsun, Hunger

“As an egg, when broken, never
Can be mended, but must ever
Be the same crushed egg forever —
So shall this dark heart of mine!
Which, though broken, is still breaking,
And shall never more cease aching
For the sleep which has no waking —
For the sleep which now is thine!”
― Thomas Holley Chivers

“I worship you like night's pavilion,
O vase of sadness, o great silent one,
And love you more since you escape from me,
And since you seem, my night's sublimity,
To mock me and increase the leagues that lie
Between my arms and blue immensity.

I move to the attack, besiege, assail,
Like eager worms after a funeral.
I even love, o beast implacable,
The coldness which makes you more beautiful.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“I am interested only in "nonsense"; only in that which makes no practical sense. I am interested in life only in its absurd manifestations.”
― Daniil Kharms

“The race of prophets is extinct. Europe is becoming set in its ways, slowly embalming itself beneath the wrappings of its borders, its factories, its law-courts and its universities. The frozen Mind cracks between the mineral staves which close upon it. The fault lies with your mouldy systems, your logic of 2 + 2 = 4. The fault lies with you, Chancellors, caught in the net of syllogisms. You manufacture engineers, magistrates, doctors, who know nothing of the true mysteries of the body or the cosmic laws of existence. False scholars blind outside this world, philosophers who pretend to reconstruct the mind. The least act of spontaneous creation is a more complex and revealing world than any metaphysics.”
― Antonin Artaud

“I suffer from severe nerve damage in the hands, arms, legs and spine. My right leg is numb all the time and there are times when I cannot move either of my legs. In addition to this my C-T-L spine has severe disc herniation. I have Fibromyalgia, asthma, severe allergies, heart problems, bleeding ulcers and I eat maybe once every two or three days.

I maintain body weight by drinking an average of 36 Pepsi’s per day.”
― Larry Sinclair

“VOTERS STRIKE!
...above all, remember that he who solicits your vote is by that very fact revealed as a scoundrel, since in exchange for your advantage and fortune he promises a cornucopia of marvels he'll never deliver because he hasn't the power to deliver them. the man you elect represents neither your misery nor your aspirations- nor anything else of yours- but rather his own interests, which are all opposed to yours...do not imagine that the sorry spectacle at which you assist today is peculiar to one epoch or one regime, and that it will pass away. all epochs and all regimes are worth the same- that is, they are worthless. so go home, my good chap, and go on strike against universal suffrage. I tell you, you've nothing to lose... and at least it should keep you amused for a while. I tell you, good chap! go home! go on strike!”
― Octave Mirbeau

“It has been estimated that more than 50 million individuals have lost their lives to wars and religious massacres. Is there even one among them worth the blood of a single bird?”
― Marquis de Sade