Dying In A A War Never Stopped

After Dinner Or Lunch Or Whatever It Was -- With My Crazy 12-hour Night I Was No Longer Sure What Was What -- I Said, "look, Baby, I'm Sorry, But Don't You Realize That This Job Is Driving Me Crazy? Look, Let's Give It Up. Let's Just Lay Around And Make Love And Take Walks And Talk A Little. Let's Go To The Zoo. Let's Look At Animals. Let's Drive Down And Look At The Ocean. It's Only 45 Minutes. Let's Play Games In The Arcades. Let's Go To The Races, The Art Museum, The Boxing Matches. Let's Have Friends. Let's Laugh. This Kind Of Life Like Everybody Else's Kind Of Life: It's Killing Us.

They Looked As If Nothing Had Ever Touched Them--all Well-mothered, Protected, With A Soft Sheen Of Contentment. None Of Them Had Ever Been In Jail, Or Worked Hard With Their Hands, Or Even Gotten A Traffic Ticket. Skimmed-milk Jollies, The Whole Bunch.

I Never Pump Up My Vulgarity. I Wait For It To Arrive In Its Own Terms.

There's Nothing To Mourn About Death Any More Than There Is To Mourn About The Growing Of A Flower. What Is Terrible Is Not Death But The Lives People Live Or Don't Live Up Until Their Death. They Don't Honor Their Own Lives ... Their Minds Are Full Of Cotton. They Swallow God Without Thinking, They Swallow Country Without Thinking. Soon They Forget How To Think, They Let Others Think For Them.... Most People's Deaths Are A Sham. There's Nothing Left To Die.

Your Letters Got Sadder. Your Lovers Betrayed You. Kid, I Wrote Back, All Lovers Betray. It Didn't Help. You Said You Had A Crying Bench And It Was By A Bridge And The Bridge Was Over The River And You Sat On The Crying Bench Every Night And Wept For The Lovers Who Had Hurt And Forgotten You.