Bob Kaufman > Quotes

“Streets paved with opal sadness,
Lead me counterclockwise, to pockets of joy,
And jazz.”
― Bob Kaufman, Cranial Guitar: Selected Poems

“I hope that when machines finally take over, they won't build men that break down, as soon as they're paid for.”
― Bob Kaufman, Golden Sardine

“Remember not to forget the dying colors of yesterday
As you inhale tomorrow's hot dream, blown from frozen lips.
Remember, you naked agent of every nothing.”
― Bob Kaufman

“Sometimes when the wind is blowing in my hair,
I cry because its coolness is too beautiful”
― Bob Kaufman

“Let the voices of dead poets
ring louder in your ears
Than the screechings mouthed
In mildewed editorials
Listen to the music of centuries,
Rising above the mushroom time.”
― Bob Kaufman, Golden Sardine

“I never understand other peoples' desires or hopes,
until they coincide with my own, then we clash.”
― Bob Kaufman

“For every remembered dream. There are twenty nighttime lifetimes.”
― Bob Kaufman, Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness

“Digging among reddened lipstained cups,
Of leftover sadness,
Hopelessly hoping hopefully
To find love
Of a dead moon
Or a poem.”
― Bob Kaufman

“I am not not an I, secret wick, I do nothing, light myself, burn.”
― Bob Kaufman, Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness

“(So much laughter, concealed by blood and faith;
Life is a saxophone played by death.)

Greedy to please, we learned to cry;
Hungry to live, we learned to die.
The heart is a sad musician,
Forever playing the blues.”
― Bob Kaufman, Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness

“My face is covered with maps of dead nations”
― Bob Kaufman, Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness

“Spiraling in hollowed caves of skin-stretched me, totally doorless,

Emptied of vital parts, previously evicted finally
by landlord mind

To make nerve-lined living space, needed desperately by my transient, sightless, sleepless,
Soul.”
― Bob Kaufman, Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness

“The Church is becoming alarmed by the number of people defecting to God.”
― Bob Kaufman, Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness

“i shall refuse to go to the moon,
unless i'm inoculated, against
the dangers of discriminate love.”
― Bob Kaufman

“Raging in and out of insane comas,
Spouting word fountains
At the shriveled mouths
Of wildly depraved roses
As Cassandra dances
On the singed eyelids
Of sleepless ants.”
― Bob Kaufman, Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness

“My body is a torn mattress,
Disheveled throbbing place
For the comings and goings
Of loveless transients.
The whole of me
Is an unfinished room
Filled with dank breath
Escaping in gasps to nowhere.
Before completely objective mirrors
I have shot myself with my eyes,
But death refused my advances.
I have walked on my walls each night
Through strange landscapes in my head.
I have brushed my teeth with orange peel,
Iced with cold blood from the dripping faucets.
My face is covered with maps of dead nations;
My hair is littered with drying ragweed.
Bitter raisins drip haphazardly from my nostrils
While schools of glowing minnows swim from my mouth.
The nipples of my breasts are sun-browned cockleburs;
Long-forgotten Indian tribes fight battles on my chest
Unaware of the sunken ships rotting in my stomach.
My legs are charred remains of burned cypress trees;
My feet are covered with moss from bayous, flowing
across my floor.
I can't go out anymore.
I shall sit on my ceiling.
Would you wear my eyes?”
― Bob Kaufman, Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness

“In an emergency, I can rearrange your beautiful wreckage
With broken giraffe demolitions and lovely colorless explosions.”
― Bob Kaufman