0123

The title does not mean anything.

Nothing means anything.

This implies nothing.

***

Confession

by Charles Bukowski

waiting for death / like a cat / that will jump on the / bed

I am so very sorry for /my wife

she will see this / stiff / white / body / shake it once, then / maybe / again

"Hank!"

Hank won't / answer.

it's not my death that / worries me, it's my wife / left with this / pile of / nothing.

I want to / let her know / though / that all the nights / sleeping / beside her

even the useless / arguments / were things / ever splendid

and the hard / words / I ever feared to / say / can now be / said:

I love / you.

***

I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You

by Pablo Neruda

I do not love you except because I love you;

I go from loving to not loving you,

From waiting to not waiting for you

My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;

I hate you deeply, and hating you

Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you

Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume

My heart with its cruel

Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who

Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,

Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

***

Without You

by Herman Hesse

Translated by James Wright

My Pillow gazes upon me at night

Empty as a gravestone;

I never thought it would be so bitter

To be alone,

Not to lie down asleep in your hair.

I lie alone in a silent house,

The hanging lamp darkened,

And gently stretch out my hands

To gather in yours,

And softly press my warm mouth

Toward you, and kiss myself, exhausted and weak-

Then suddenly I'm awake

And all around me the cold night grows still.

The star in the window shines clearly-

Where is your blond hair,

Where your sweet mouth?

Now I drink pain in every delight

And poison in every wine;

I never knew it would be so bitter

To be alone,

Alone, without you.

***

Conversation

by Charles Baudelaire

Translated by William Aggeler

You are a lovely autumn sky, clear and rosy!

But sadness rises in me like the sea,

And as it ebbs, leaves on my sullen lips

The burning memory of its bitter slime.

— In vain does your hand slip over my swooning breast;

What it seeks, darling, is a place plundered

By the claws and the ferocious teeth of woman.

Seek my heart no longer; the beasts have eaten it.

My heart is a palace polluted by the mob;

They get drunk there, kill, tear each other's hair!

— A perfume floats about your naked breast!...

O Beauty, ruthless scourge of souls, you desire it!

With the fire of your eyes, brilliant as festivals,

Bum these tatters which the beasts spared!

***

The Bliss Of Sorrow

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

NEVER dry, never dry,

Tears that eternal love sheddeth!

How dreary, how dead doth the world still appear,

When only half-dried on the eye is the tear!

Never dry, never dry,

Tears that unhappy love sheddeth!