A rat race

is for rats. We’re not rats.

We’re human beings. Reject the insidious

pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties

to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence

in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of

self promotion and self advancement. This is how it

starts and, before you know where you are,

you’re a fully paid up member

of the rat pack. The price

is too high.

Jimmy Reid

Life is short,

though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place

beautiful.

Maggie Smith

yuko shimizu 

all you

can know about animals

as persons. the names of trees and flowers

and weeds. the names of stars and the movements

of planets and the moon. your own six senses,

with  a watchful elegant mind. at least

one kind of traditional magic:

divination, astrology, the

book of changes,

the tarot;

dreams.

the illusory demons

and the illusory shining gods.

kiss the ass of the devil and eat shit;

fuck his horny barbed cock, fuck

the hag, and all the celestial

angels and maidens

perfum’d and

golden– 

& then

love the human:

wives husbands and friends

children’s games, comic books, bubble-gum,

the weirdness of television and advertising.

work long, dry hours of dull work

swallowed and accepted and

lived with and finally

lovd. exhaustion, 

hunger,

rest.

the wild

freedom of the dance, extasy

silent solitary illumination, entasy

real danger. gambles and

the edge of

death.

Gary Snyder

This morning

I felt strong and jaunty in my

mail order Israeli commando trousers.

Up at Hard Luck Ranch I spoke to the ravens

in baritone, fed the cats with manly gestures. Acacia

thorns can’t penetrate these mighty pants, then

out by the corral the infant pup began to

weep, abandoned. In an instant

I became another of the

Earth’s billion sad

mothers.

Jim Harrison