Robert Ramirez

“But who names a starship the Icarus? What kind of man possess that much hubris, that he dares it to fall?”
― Amie Kaufman, These Broken Stars

“Icarus should have waited for nightfall,
the moon would have never let him go.”
― Nina Mouawad

“Stab your demoniac smile to my brain,
Soak me in cognac, love, and cocaine”
― Aleister Crowley, Diary of a Drug Fiend

“those cries rose from among the twisted roots
through which the spirits of the damned were slinking
to hide from us. Therefore my Master said:
'If you break off a twig, what you will learn
will drive what you are thinking from your head.'

Puzzled, I raised my hand a bit and slowly
broke off a branchlet from an enormous thorn:
and the great trunk of it cried: 'Why do you break me?'

And after blood had darkened all the bowl
of the wound, it cried again: 'Why do you tear me?
Is there no pity left in any soul?

Men we were, and now we are changed to sticks;
well might your hand have been more merciful
were we no more than souls of lice and ticks.'

As a green branch with one end all aflame
will hiss and sputter sap out of the other
as the air escapes- so from that trunk there came

words and blood together, gout by gout.
Startled, I dropped the branch that I was holding
and stood transfixed by fear,...”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno