Collected Poems Quotes

“Truth is always what they don't say.”
― Kenneth Patchen, Collected Poems

“Man is not to direct or to be directed anymore than a tree or a cloud or a stone

Man is not to rule or be ruled anymore than a faith or a truth or a love

Man is not to doubt or to be doubted anymore than a wave or a seed or a fire

There is no problem in living which life hasn't answered to its own need

And we cannot direct, rule, or doubt what is beyond our highest ability to understand we can only be humble before it we can only worship ourselves because we are a part of it

The eye in the leaf is watching out of our fingers
The ear in the stone is listening through our voices
The thought of the wave is thinking in our dreams
The faith of the seed is building with our deaths”
― Kenneth Patchen, Collected Poems

“The animal I wanted
Couldn't get into the world
I can hear it crying
When I sit like this away from life”
― Kenneth Patchen, Collected Poems

“This is the evening of the two-fisted prayer”
― Kenneth Patchen, Collected Poems

“Law & order embrace on hate's border.”
― Kenneth Patchen, Collected Poems

“Why should anyone be surprised at what the men "in power" are capable of --didn't every mad-Judas one of them begin his career by slowly & brutally strangling an innocent child?”
― Kenneth Patchen, Collected Poems

“What shall light us to murder & defile if by some chance the Laws of the State happen to get turned off?”
― Kenneth Patchen, Collected Poems

“Modern scientific accomplishments" --a wealth of methods coupled with a poverty of intentions which, having nearly exhausted the hell-potential of the earth, move on now to the first frontier of the heavens.”
― Kenneth Patchen, Collected Poems

“Take taking from those that give & nobody anywhere will need any more such gifts.”
― Kenneth Patchen, Collected Poems

“It is the nature of man to expose with laws of doubt & impatience, no feeling of wonder that he should a participant in such an incredible undertaking; but rather the shameful certainty that what has been willed without him must in some way resemble the productions of his own sand-castle magnificence.”
― Kenneth Patchen, Collected Poems

“Stirred...the fur-toothed graves of young boys...a thousand slain in the time it would take to do love with a pretty girl or think of a new God.”
― Kenneth Patchen, Collected Poems

“I write the lips of the moon upon her shoulders. In a
temple of silvery farawayness I guard her to rest.

For her bed I write a stillness over all the swans of the
world. With the morning breath of the snow leopard I
cover her against any hurt.

Using the pen of rivers and mountaintops I store her
pillow with singing.

Upon her hair I write the looking of the heavens at
early morning.

-- Away from this kingdom, from this last undefiled
place, I would keep our governments, our civilization, and
all other spirit-forsaken and corrupt institutions.

O cold beautiful blossoms of the moon moving upon
her shoulders . . . the lips of the moon moving there . . .
where the touch of any other lips would be a profanation.”
― Kenneth Patchen, Collected Poems

“As We Are So Wonderfully Done with Each Other”

As we are so wonderfully done with each other
We can walk into our separate sleep
On floors of music where the milkwhite cloak of childhood lies

O my lady, my fairest dear, my sweetest, loveliest one
Your lips have splashed my dull house with the speech of flowers
My hands are hallowed where they touched over your
soft curving.

It is good to be weary from that brilliant work
It is being God to feel your breathing under me

A waterglass on the bureau fills with morning . . .
Don’t let anyone in to wake us.”
― Kenneth Patchen, Collected Poems

“Out of slavery, freedom --yes, & roses from the pig's behind.”
― Kenneth Patchen, Collected Poems

“Ambition is the weakness of all the great spirits who in acceptance will find the joy & the despair the seek. The physician can only cure when he is willing to assume your disease. To be shunned is to be God a little...”
― Kenneth Patchen, Collected Poems

“If the truth is inside,
And the form is outside,
What is the truth of sleep?”
― Kenneth Patchen, Collected Poems

“To live, fellowbub, is essential but to overlive is to court the devil's wife, & in loving that she you will be lain in such sparkling cold labyrinths”
― Kenneth Patchen, Collected Poems