without love.
breath is just a clock ticking.

i being poor
have only my dreams.
i have spread my dreams under your feet.
thread softly,
because you thread on my dreams.

i think i will just end things. as soon as i get my affairs straightened out. i can't take living like this. always wanting what i can't have. never getting anything i want. enduring one failure after another. watching and feeling myself erode away with every disappointment. my soul has taken all it can. i want to still be recognizable as human when i pass, not the empty creature i'm becoming.

to kiss her.
feel her soft, warm skin.
her lips looks so perfect,
their shape, color.

why can't i crash my car and die? that way i wouldn't have to think about her or feel for her or desire her.

sorrow wears the face off happiness

i can't get her out of my sight
i see her everywhere.
she's imbedded in my soul
i wish she would just leave.
please leave.....................................................................

it's not that i've never seen anyone as beautiful as her. i've just never seen anyone with beauty like hers. flawless beauty.

i feel like i'm drowning in my own despair and there is no one to save me. all the hate, anger and love, all locked up inside. wasting away. causing me too rot.

sometimes i feel like i'm living someone else's life. i'm standing on the outside watching other people do all the things i should be doing. having all the things that should be mine.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm 'round the corner from anything that's real
I'm across the road from hope
I'm under a bridge in a rip tide
That's taken everything I call my own

One step closer to knowing
One step closer to knowing

I'm on an island at a busy intersection
I can't go forward, I can't turn back
Can't see the future
It's getting away from me
I just watch the tail lights glowing

One step closer to knowing
One step closer to knowing
One step closer to knowing
Knowing, knowing

I'm hanging out to dry
With my old clothes
Finger still red with the prick of an old rose
Well the heart that hurts
Is a heart that beats
Can you hear the drummer slowing?

One step closer to knowing
One step closer to knowing
One step closer to knowing
To knowing, to knowing, to knowing

Thanks for the wild turkey and the Passenger Pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts —

thanks for a Continent to despoil and poison —

thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger —

thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin, leaving the carcass to rot —

thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes —

thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through —

thanks for the KKK, for nigger-killing lawmen feeling their notches, for decent church-going women with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces —

thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers —

thanks for laboratory AIDS —

thanks for Prohibition and the War Against Drugs —

thanks for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business —

thanks for a nation of finks — yes,

thanks for all the memories... all right, let's see your arms... you always were a headache and you always were a bore —

thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.



Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, 1986
William S. Burroughs
For John Dillinger
In hope he is still alive