There were guitar players, and as happens with talent sometimes, the guitar players were too talented. There could not be places for all of them in a single rock band.

In ashen hills of yonder

"Give it to me I said, you dip! Fork it over!"

I remember one time when we played strip poker in the basement of your house on Euclid Avenue, me, Terry, you and Andy. And I remember drinking lots of wine and fixing the deck so that you kept losing and having to take off all your clothes, and still you

You’ll say you should have known. You’ll blame my music.

“Tell me a story,” he said, toying with his top hat, running his fingers along its brim.

After my mother died, my father shipped me to my uncle's. He hadn't told me she was dying, so he could just mourn alone.Lena lived next door, Italian, my age -- which was ten -- beautiful. She was watched by goons in black suits. Her parents owned a restaurant. Across the…

Won't speak a word against 'em. Car trunk stunk like bad chicken long after, but I won't speak a word against 'em.

The nerves are birds that guide us to feeling the loop and lift of reverie.

My eyes don’t close but hers are shut tight, and something inside tells me that to this girl, I could be absolutely anyone.

Sit down at night and stare into the fire. Consider if Cupid is just another liar.

The washing machine at home was broken. It was an old leaky Maytag. A discouraging mess—twisted panties, sky-blue jeans, and an old lover or two or three floating downstream (the reverse of spawning salmon). Each man was slightly drowned,…

I have a ninety two percent rejection rate.

(the hourglass has not gone digital, oh no,/but these days, silicon is in with the sand)

The brain taints everything it brings to us/ with its limited apparatus, its precepts,// all the things it thinks it knows.