The Chameleon Couch Quotes

“Go & tell your drinking buddies
& psychoanalyst your neighbor
has risen from the ashes. I wonder
if I should tell you about the love letters
hidden behind the doorjamb. This house
still stands among my lavender flowers.
Tell your inheritors to think of me
when they smile up at the sky.”
― Yusef Komunyakaa, The Chameleon Couch

“Years ago you followed someone
here, in love with breath
kissing the nape of your neck,
back when it was easy to be
at least two places at once.”
― Yusef Komunyakaa, The Chameleon Couch

“I glimpsed Alice in Wonderland.
Her voice smelled like an orange,
though I'd never peeled an orange.
I knocked on the walls, in a circle.”
― Yusef Komunyakaa, The Chameleon Couch

“The place was a funeral pyre for the young
who died before knowing the thirst of man
or woman. Furies with snakes in their hair
wept. Tantalus ate pears & sipped wine
in a dream, as the eyes of a vulture
poised over Tityus' liver.”
― Yusef Komunyakaa, The Chameleon Couch

“A goddess of dawn
scooted under a zing of barbed wire
to witness your birth.”
― Yusef Komunyakaa, The Chameleon Couch

“I'm turning you into a girl
chasing a butterfly, a she-wolf
on a hilltop, & then back into a woman.”
― Yusef Komunyakaa, The Chameleon Couch

“The older I get
the quicker Christmas comes,
but if I had to give up the heavenly
taste of Guinness dark, I couldn't
live another goddamn day. Darling,
you can chisel that into my headstone.”
― Yusef Komunyakaa, The Chameleon Couch

“See her? I was born to read
her mind. I can get so close to her
my breath is cool on her skin,
& she'll be seven blocks away
when a cry leaps into her throat
& she knows I untied the money belt
hidden under her velvet jacket.”
― Yusef Komunyakaa, The Chameleon Couch

“She lives between the Vale of Kashmir & nirvana, beneath a bipolar sky. The voice speaks of an atlas & a mask, a map of Punjab, an ugly scar from college days on her abdomen, the unsaid credo, but I still can't make the voice say, Look, I'm sorry. I've been dead for a long time.”
― Yusef Komunyakaa, The Chameleon Couch