Bob Kaufman Quotes

Streets paved with opal sadness, Lead me counterclockwise, to pockets of joy, And jazz.

I hope that when machines finally take over, they won't build men that break down, as soon as they're paid for.

Remember not to forget the dying colors of yesterday As you inhale tomorrow's hot dream, blown from frozen lips. Remember, you naked agent of every nothing.

Sometimes when the wind is blowing in my hair, I cry because its coolness is too beautiful

If you can't offend people in a free society, then the question you have to ask yourself is, "Just how free is it?

Let the voices of dead poets ring louder in your ears Than the screechings mouthed In mildewed editorials Listen to the music of centuries, Rising above the mushroom time.

I never understand other peoples' desires or hopes, until they coincide with my own, then we clash.

WORK IS NOT FUN! As the brilliant clinical psychologist Dr. Stan Martindale said, “Once they pay you for something you love doing, they kill it for you.

For every remembered dream. There are twenty nighttime lifetimes.

I am not not an I, secret wick, I do nothing, light myself, burn.

Digging among reddened lipstained cups, Of leftover sadness, Hopelessly hoping hopefully To find love Of a dead moon Or a poem.

My face is covered with maps of dead nations

(So much laughter, concealed by blood and faith; Life is a saxophone played by death.) Greedy to please, we learned to cry; Hungry to live, we learned to die. The heart is a sad musician, Forever playing the blues.

Spiraling in hollowed caves of skin-stretched me, totally doorless, Emptied of vital parts, previously evicted finally by landlord mind To make nerve-lined living space, needed desperately by my transient, sightless, sleepless, Soul.

In an emergency, I can rearrange your beautiful wreckage With broken giraffe demolitions and lovely colorless explosions.

The Internet was made for Andy; if it had existed in the early ’80s, Andy would have had a camera in his house and recorded his every movement. He would have invented reality TV.

The Church is becoming alarmed by the number of people defecting to God.

I believe that fact had been haunting Danny for all these years. But now he could change all that. He could right a wrong and rewrite history, for in his film not only he but also the entire cast of Taxi would be at Andy’s funeral.

i shall refuse to go to the moon, unless i'm inoculated, against the dangers of discriminate love.

My body is a torn mattress, Disheveled throbbing place For the comings and goings Of loveless transients. The whole of me Is an unfinished room Filled with dank breath Escaping in gasps to nowhere. Before completely objective mirrors I have shot myself with my eyes, But death refused my advances. I have walked on my walls each night Through strange landscapes in my head. I have brushed my teeth with orange peel, Iced with cold blood from the dripping faucets. My face is covered with maps of dead nations; My hair is littered with drying ragweed. Bitter raisins drip haphazardly from my nostrils While schools of glowing minnows swim from my mouth. The nipples of my breasts are sun-browned cockleburs; Long-forgotten Indian tribes fight battles on my chest Unaware of the sunken ships rotting in my stomach. My legs are charred remains of burned cypress trees; My feet are covered with moss from bayous, flowing across my floor. I can't go out anymore. I shall sit on my ceiling. Would you wear my eyes?

Raging in and out of insane comas, Spouting word fountains At the shriveled mouths Of wildly depraved roses As Cassandra dances On the singed eyelids Of sleepless ants.