Jay

“Thallus, you faggot, softer than rabbitfur,
or goosedown, or a sweet little earlobe,
or an old man's listless dick, lying in cobwebs and neglect.
And yet, when the full moon shows the other guests starting to nod and yawn,
you're grabbier than a plunging hurricane.
Give me back my housecoat, which you pounced on,
and my good Spanish flax table napkins, and the painted boxwood writing tablets,
which you keep on display, jerk, like they were heirlooms,
unstick them from your claws and give them back
or I'll use a whip to scribble some really embarrassing lines,
hot as the iron that brands disgrace on a common thief,
on your woolsoft sides and dainty little hands.
You'll get excited in a brand new way, your head will spin
like a boat caught out on the open sea when the winds go mad.”
― Gaius Valerius Catull, The Complete Poems

“If it wasn’t one thing it was another, and it never mattered which. Always something to run away from, no matter what, no matter why, as though you’d been born with a consciousness of guilt and would find that thing to feel guilty about regardless.”
― Charles Jackson, The Lost Weekend

“THE barometer of his emotional nature was set for a spell of riot.”
― Charles R. Jackson, The Lost Weekend

“Irma, a stalagmite of crimson stone, knew, for all the riot of her veins that a page had turned over. At chapter forty? O no! At chapter one, for she had never lived before save in a pulseless preface.”
― Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast