The Hate Poems Quotes

“LETTING GO

In a constant state of choking down bitterness.
Getting it all down in the hope of exhausting it.
Only to find there's more, it multiplies.

How empty my life would be without it.
What a gaping hole it would leave.
And what could possibly take its place?

That's a good question...
I'm drawing a blank.

To 'let go' of bitterness and resentment:
It's an interesting concept.
I must try it sometime.
No hurry.

The Hate Poems
John Tottenham”
― John Tottenham, The Hate Poems

“Cast further adrift by this subtle urgency,
I can feel my precious life ebbing away.
Better to be a recluse than a loose wreck,
a small fish in a pond instead of lost at sea.
Erudition without motivation cuts no ice around here;
the extent of my ambition is shabby gentility.

The Hate Poems
John Tottenham”
― John Tottenham, The Hate Poems

“I can go from biting loneliness
to social claustrophobia - and back -
in ten seconds flat.

The Hate Poems
John Tottenham”
― John Tottenham, The Hate Poems

“SENSE AND INSENSIBILITY

You fell just far enough
to break your fall, losing it
while being careful not to lose it all.
A struggle embraced conditionally,
that you could emerge from victoriously,
with enhanced credibility.

The Hate Poems
John Tottenham”
― John Tottenham, The Hate Poems

“You yearned
to earn the right to have your problems
taken seriously, to move on
and claim your reward:
the right to be bored.

The Hate Poems
John Tottenham”
― John Tottenham, The Hate Poems

“You looked away
when we passed each other on the street.
Then you disappeared again,
and your life was complete.

The Hate Poems, p.54
John Tottenham”
― John Tottenham, The Hate Poems

“WINDSONG

I have a heart like a wheelbarrow,
there are no windmills in my mind.
Love blows in and floats around freely
like the wind - getting in the way
of other things.

This rootless love without design,
which has no object, point or point of origin -
one looks for it in every face,
looking for somebody to become that place
where everything that falls apart
falls into place.

It seeks definition, a place of rest,
to find its home in a woman's breast -
to die there, or multiply there.
When, surely to keep it to oneself
would be best.

The Hate Poems
John Tottenham”
― John Tottenham, The Hate Poems

“NAP ON A MUGGY AFTERNOON

When we part, all the closeness and pleasure
of our time together immediately dissolves
into lonely agitation. Having shared a cool iron bed
with a warm and beautiful woman, I return home
and lie incapacitated on the sofa: drained, dismantled,
wracked with longing and restlessness;
yet somehow, despite the dismal aftereffects,
it seems worth it.

The Hate Poems
John Tottenham”
― John Tottenham, The Hate Poems

“Constantly fighting funny familiar feelings of futility,
trying to put the brakes on the morbidity,
but it keeps rolling down the line.
And as I watch it disappear,
life as I have long known it,
becomes ll the more precious
and acutely defined.”
― John Tottenham, The Hate Poems

“It's sensitizing, of course,
to feel this way,
and ideally it should nurture
other areas of one's life like gentle rain.
But this sort of happiness feels
like a dead end. Bliss:
but I would still be relieved
were it to end.
No problem:
That can be arranged.”
― John Tottenham, The Hate Poems

“As you cling to me affectionately,
covering me with tender kisses,
I visualize you, in great detail,
melting beneath the thrusts of another,
and imagine how much I'll miss you,
once I've finally succeeded in alienating you.”
― John Tottenham, The Hate Poems

“I have never been in a relationship,
even when I was enjoying it,
without continually plotting how to get out of it.”
― John Tottenham, The Hate Poems