RKS Literature: No Reason for a Sailor to Sleep in a Bed for Two (Herman Melville)

“No man prefers to sleep two in a bed, In fact, you would a good deal rather not sleep with your own brother. I don’t know how it is, but people like to be private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to sleeping with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town, and that stranger a harpooner, then your objections indefinitely multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should sleep two in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors no more sleep two in a bed at sea than bachelor Kings do ashore.

Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.

RKS Literature: “Tooth Money Thievery” (William S. Burroughs)

“She was constantly saving money to have teeth out, but somehow she always spent the money on something else. Either she got drunk on it, or she gave it to someone in a in irrational fit of generosity. She was a mark for every con artist in Tangier because she was known to have money she was always saving to have her teeth out. But putting the touch on her was not without danger. She would suddenly turn vicious and maul some mooch with all the strength of her Junoesque limbs shouting,’ You lousy bastard! Trying to con me out of my teeth money.’

William S. Burroughs, “Lee and the Boys”, 1989.

RKS Literature: “Beautiful Mouth But not so Beautiful Teeth!” (William S. Burroughs)

“When she opened her mouth to speak, she revealed horrible teeth, gray, carious, repaired rather than filled with pieces of steel-some actually rusty, other of copper covered with green verdigis. The teeth were abnormally large and crowded over each other. Broken, corroded braces stuck to them like an old barbed wire fence.”

William S. Burroughs, “Lee and the Boys”, 1989.

RKS Literature: “Quitting Junk and the Last Words of the Mad Dog Esposito Brothers” (William S. Burroughs)

“Lee walked about the room. ‘I have to quit,’ he said over and over, feeling the gravity pull of junk in his cells. He experienced a moment of panic. A cry of despair wrenched his body: I have to get out of here: I have to make a break.’

As he said those words, he remembered whose words they were: the Mad Dog Esposito Brothers arrested at the scene of a multiple-slaying hold-up, separated from the electric chair by a little time and a few formalities, whispered these words into a police microphone planted in their beds in the detention ward.”

William S. Burroughs, “Lee and the Boys”, 1989.

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds): “Downtown Treblinka”

Downtown Treblinka

Hemmed into hamlets by awesome tower guard posts

The weary and beaten stagger into marbled Calcuttian black holes

To be transported up the gleaming shafts to prosperous futility

Only marred by the unhappily assimilated

Stomped over through the lack of humanity

Lined up against the wall of self enforced humility

Or

Cutthroat bestiality

Experimented on by cleaver human resources wizards

Soothed by the taxed juices and coloured flashes

That numb

Bringing “round the clock relief”

To voluntary prisoners

And the arthritic strickened

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Literature: Oceans are the Key to it All (Herman Melville)

“And still deeper the meaning of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.”

Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.

RKS Literature: All the Difference Between Paying and Being Paid (Herman Melville)

“And I always go to the sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid-what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! How cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!”

Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds):”Personalized Rubrics only after”

Personalized Rubrics only after

Initially a friendly glance

But in the early morning you can never tell

But there’s more

As the steel rips through your soft belly

Mocking Thanatos

Has conquered Eros

Who

Weeps

In the silence

Of red flashes

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds): “Misogynist Night at the Disco 1976”

Misogynist Night at the Disco 1976

So much Rod Stewart recovering from Jeff Beck shame

You I see

Mascaraed

Glossy pink lipped

Silver spooned

Corvetted

Deodorized

Sanitized

Mindless at least you’ve inspired a thought

Based on your unattainability

You piece of

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Literature: The Temporary Joy of a Successful Operation (Yury Felsen)

“I was recuperating after a successful operation. The joy, such that convalescents experience was long gone and had given way to neurotic boredom of interminable waiting. Those who are often ill know this impatient reckoning of days and hours, the alarm if the time of discharge is again discharged, the irritability brought on by the slightest inconvenience, the distrust of doctors, who seem to want only to cash in.”

Yury Felsen, “A Miracle”, 1934.