This is what you shall do:

Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men-go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers or families-re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.

walt whitman

Michael Caine

Elliot: For all my education, accomplishments and so-called wisdom, I can't fathom my own heart.

hannah and her sisters

somewhere i have never traveled

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

ee cummings

The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life

“A human being may well ask an animal, ‘Why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze and me?’ The animal would like to answer and say, ‘The reason is I always forget what I was going to say,’ but then he forgot that answer too, and stayed silent.”

The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life Nietzsche

Gloomy Planets

I don't blame it on the front row
don't blame it on them ruin class
cause i know they stay
don't blame it on the signals
don't blame it on the logbooks
cause i know they stray
like all the cars in new york
like all the lights on new year
like all these gloomy planets
you know they stay
anyway

notwist

My Blueberry Nights

Dear Jeremy,

In the last few days I've been learning how to not trust people. And I'm glad I failed. Sometimes we depend on other people as a mirror to define us and tell us who we are. And each reflection makes me like myself a little more.

Elizabeth

Cyrano de Bergerac

... but sing, dream, laugh,
move on, be alone, have a choice,
have a watchful eye and a powerful voice,
wear my hat awry, fight for a poem if I like
and perhaps even die

Never care about fame or fortune and even travel
to the moon
Triumph by chance on my own merit
Refuse to be the clinging ivy nor even
the oak or the lime.
Perhaps I'll not get far
But I'll get there alone.