The letter said that they were two feet high, and green., and shaped like plumber's friends. Their suction cups were on the ground, and their shafts, which were extremely flexible, usually pointed to the sky. At the top of each shaft was a little hand with a green eye in its palm. The creatures were friendly, and they could see in four dimensions. They pitied Earthlings for being able to see only three. They had many wonderful things to teach Earthlings, especially about time. Billy promised to tell what some of those wonderful things were in his next letter.
        Billy was working on his second letter when the first letter was published. The second letter started out like this:
The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
        When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "so it goes."
--Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

Everyone struggles against despair, but it always wins in the end. It has to. It's the thing that lets us say goodbye.
--Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

The nuns taught us there are two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you’ll follow. Grace doesn’t try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things. The nuns taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end. I will be true to you. Whatever comes.
--"The Tree Of Life", 2011

One can show no greater respect than to weep for a stranger.
--Jose Saramago, Seeing

I am...sad and angry. Why is my spirit so sad and angry? I look back at my life and all I can remember is rage and rage and rage.
--Chris Adrian, The Children's Hospital


Mr. X
Thinking of a kid who doesn’t want to say he’s still
using heroin. He’s six minutes old and the cut
below his eye’s on fire just beneath
the visible wavelengths. I suspect
he’ll drop out of college and washing his clothes.
He’ll go to New York, which is my favorite actor,
how tall it stands and green in the middle
of murder or love, and then Africa,
because getting around is like practicing death,
the unknown cliffs and call to prayer in the morning
in a city he can’t speak to. Were I a sailor,

I’d cut my ship loose one night and miss it
the rest of my life, go looking in ports
with my eyes closed. I sense wandering in him
on a suicidal scale, like he’ll pick a fight
with the ocean. When I came into Heraklion,
I spent hours on the concrete blocks
along the shore, they’re shaped like jacks, those
we scooped as tots while a ball bounced,
and three times as big as a man. People
and sunlight went by and that was enough for me,

but this kid, I fear he wants a bullet in every second,
for time to be furious and piercing
and will make it so by putting his face
through a windshield each day. There are so many
round things, like an O in the arm, the O of poets,
that gasping sound, that syllable of praise
we offer in lieu of sense. How romantic,
the poem he’s writing in his skin, this kid
who doesn’t know what he’s trying to let go
and so throws everything in.
--Bob Hicok

By Their Works
Who cleaned up the Last Supper?
These would be my people.
Maybe hung over, wanting
desperately a better job,
standing with rags
in hand as the window
beckons with hills
of yellow grass. In Da Vinci,
the blue robed apostle
gesturing at Christ
is saying, give Him the check.
What a mess they've made
of their faith. My God
would put a busboy
on earth to roam
among the waiters
and remind them to share
their tips. The woman
who finished one
half eaten olive
and scooped the rest
into her pockets,
walked her tiny pride home
to children who looked
at her smile and saw
the salvation of a meal.
All that week
at work she ignored
customers who talked
of Rome and silk
and crucifixions,
though she couldn't stop
thinking of this man
who said thank you
each time she filled
His glass.
--Bob Hicok

When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between seven and eight o' clock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.
--William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
-Jack Gilbert, "A Brief for the Defense"