Reincarnation & Other Stimulants Quotes

“To a Depressed Friend

Sometimes, to make sure
You're still here,
Look up for cloud sustenance.

Be sure they are
Different from yesterday,
From an hour ago,

From when you were 15
And sky didn't matter
Because only pretty girls did.

Note how cumulus
Will be looking down
And naming what

Kind of human you're
Shaped like: mailman,
Archaeologist, student of rain.

On clear nights, rely on starlight.
Pentacles. Pulses.
Further proof of existence.”
― Ken Craft, Reincarnation & Other Stimulants: Life, Death, & In-Between Poems

“THOREAU KNOWS
(The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.)


Making sense of things,
Trying to track

Nine pebbles of sadness
To their source.

Sly crows
Stole them a mile back,

But Thoreau knows
I should walk anyway

Under sun-coined trees
Thick with wood-thrush song

Till I reach undergrowth
Dense and itchy with the past

Till the air cools and I am near
Enough to con crow talk

Mouth fulls, stories dark.”
― Ken Craft, Reincarnation & Other Stimulants: Life, Death, & In-Between Poems

“from THE PAUSE BETWEEN


One day the dragonflies appear sudden as the sun.
Speed and softness, they lash sky to air in silent seams.
One's barred wings and abdomen are pressing

to the warm dock's slats. Another lights on the Chekhov book
you bought me, not realizing, like everything, it is a short
story, too.”
― Ken Craft, Reincarnation & Other Stimulants: Life, Death, & In-Between Poems