Kenneth Patchen Quotes

It is fully practical to create that which has form in the silence. The noise art makes is usually heard by those whose lives listen to god. It is not adviseable to cheat that which has no other stake than the deeps and brights of all man.

I got the fat poet into a corner and told him he was writing shit and couldn't get away with it

Now it is night and time
for sleep. Everyone is
tired

from garbage-glutting
lifting their snouts
from the trough
long enough
to ease their gut -
I won't urge the point.

Gold-plated poems
to stuff up
their mind's ass

or politics
watered down so as
not to scare the blue bloods
Boo! you well-fed bastards

All at Once Is What Eternity Is.

What is a 'thing'? All is movement, a flowing. How stupid it is to speak of the 'mind'. There is a body; there is a mind: they are mixed up together. Shakespeare with a hole in his sock will not write the sonnet of a Shakespeare with socks intact.

You will protect with the last drop of someone else's blood what was never yours.

Think enough and you won't know anything.

Man is not to direct or to be directed anymore than a tree or a cloud or a stone

Man is not to rule or be ruled anymore than a faith or a truth or a love

Man is not to doubt or to be doubted anymore than a wave or a seed or a fire

There is no problem in living which life hasn't answered to its own need

And we cannot direct, rule, or doubt what is beyond our highest ability to understand we can only be humble before it we can only worship ourselves because we are a part of it

The eye in the leaf is watching out of our fingers
The ear in the stone is listening through our voices
The thought of the wave is thinking in our dreams
The faith of the seed is building with our deaths

This is the evening of the two-fisted prayer

There are so many little dyings that it doesn't matter which of them is death.

The question is not: do we believe in God? but rather: does God believe in us? And the answer is: only an unbeliever could have created our image of God; and only a false God could be satisfied with it.

There are so many little dyings How do we know which one of them is death?

I want to buy me a hat with a golden feather & a book with the confessions of God in it

The Reason for Skylarks

It was nearly morning when the giant
Reached the tree of children.
Their faces shone like white apples
On the cold dark branches
And their dresses and little coats
Made sodden gestures in the wind.

He did not laugh or weep or stamp
His heavy feet. He set to work at once
Lifting them tenderly down
Into a straw basket which was fixed
By a golden strap to his shoulder.
Only one did he drop - a soft pretty child
Whose hair was the color of watered milk.
She fell into the long grass
And he could not find her
Though he searched until his fingers
Bled and the full light came.

He shook his fist at the sky and called
God a bitter name.
But no answer was made and the giant
Got down on his knees before the tree
And putting his hands about the trunk
Shook
Until all the children had fallen
Into the grass. Then he pranced and stamped
Them to jelly. And still he felt no peace.
He took his half-full basket and set it afire,
Holding it by the handle until
Everything had been burned. He saw now
Two men on steaming horses approaching
From the direction of the world
And taking a little silver flute
Out of his pocket he played tune
After tune until they came up to him.

Do I not deal with angels When her lips I touch.

Our supper is plain but we are very wonderful.

Any who live, stand alone in one place, together.

The best hope is that one of these days the ground will get disgusted enough just to walk away - leaving people with nothing more to stand on than what they have so bloody well stood for up to now.

Literature is what you write when you think you should be saying something. Writing begins when you'd rather be doing anything else: and you've just done it.

That which is not daring is nothing.

I don't consider myself to be a painter. I think of myself as someone who has used the medium of painting in an attempt to extend - give an extra dimension to - the medium of words. It happens very often my writing with a pen is interrupted with my writing with a brush - but I think of both as writing.

Stirred...the fur-toothed graves of young boys...a thousand slain in the time it would take to do love with a pretty girl or think of a new God.

Modern scientific accomplishments" --a wealth of methods coupled with a poverty of intentions which, having nearly exhausted the hell-potential of the earth, move on now to the first frontier of the heavens.

Greatness and Truth can never be in danger from these murdering wretches. To perform one's duty, be it now, be it clean, and be it done with humility ... A man is a sacred thing. ANY ACTION OR THOUGHT WHICH INJURES THE HUMAN IMAGINATION IS EVIL.

I think people need a little joy and humor as well as commitment in their lives

It's dark out, Jack, the stations out there don't identify themselves, we're in it raw-blind like burned rats, it's running out all around us, the footprints of the beast, one nobody has any notion of. The white and vacant eyes of something above there, something that doesn't know we exist. I smell heartbreak up there, Jack, a heartbreak at the center of things, and in which we don't figure at all.

Law and order embrace on hate's border.

God must have loved the People in Power, for he made them so very like their own image of him.

Snow is the only one of us that leaves no tracks.

Never oppose what seems strange in yourself. That is the only part which is aware.

Take taking from those that give & nobody anywhere will need any more such gifts.

In the love of a man and a woman is the look of God looking.

Come now, my child, if we were planning to harm you, do you think we'd be lurking here beside the path in the very darkest part of the forest?

Why shouldn't you think it's crazy to believe in a green deer? All your life you have been taught to believe in only what you can use-to set on the table, to put in the bank, to build a house with. What possible use would a green deer be to anyone? Who would believe in a man with a blazing bush in his cart? Then let me tell you that it is beliefs just such as these that are the only hope of the world. Let me tell you that until men are ready to believe in the green deer and the strange carter, we shall not lift our noses above the bloody mess we have made of our living

The one who comes to question himself cares for mankind.

Destiny is the music of the improbable. Were it otherwise, almost anyone could exist.

I think you will agree that I am alive in every part of this book; turn back twenty, thirty, one hundred pages - I am back there. That is why I hate the story; characters are not snakes that they must shed their skins on every page - there can only be one action: what a man is. When you have understood this, you will be through with novels.

Why should anyone be surprised at what the men "in power" are capable of --didn't every mad-Judas one of them begin his career by slowly & brutally strangling an innocent child?

Humanity is a good thing. Perhaps we can arrange the murder of a sizable number of people to save it.

Law & order embrace on hate's border.

Nobody's a long time.

People don't want to be healed. They want a nice juicy wound that will show well when they put neon lights around it.

What is the function of man? Surely the sheep can get along without him; horses run better wild; rifles make nothing; of what good are banks when ninety-nine percent of us have no money? - I have said: what are we on earth for? WE SERVE NO PURPOSE IN NATURE. It is my guess that we are slated for extinction.

Out of slavery, freedom --yes, & roses from the pig's behind.