It's all talk isn't it, emblem
and suggestion, it's either tremulous stutter
or taunting display: flashy but fleshless, a con man

When you unzip your dress
a thousand insects run for cover,

What is so strange about Desnos is that he says he is not afraid of going crazy, of dying, or even of the Nazis who are always watching him.

I support the animals’ urge to survive.
So much for opinions. Slithering, writhing,
nosing my way through dirt, I can identify
with that. I joke to keep the system going.

The sun is very hot. Why is it no one complains of the heat in France?

My thesis concerns the quantification of desire: what constitutes a unit of passion, what represents a significant change in body heat? Think of all the love given out without counting: to the mistress of a man who sleeps in a bed separate from his wife, whose business interests weigh heavily upon him.

When the czar arrives the audience is still, as though he still had the power to become flesh. This is a silent film, so when the czar speaks a card covers the screen. It says, “I decree the death of one hundred, no, two hundred workers.” The workers put their hands in front of their faces; this is the film-maker's image of fear, his idea of a dog with his tail between his legs, of the hiss of the cat.

OK, it’s sunny, otherworldly, skintight, 
where we’re flabby and clouded over, pining away 
under layers of jealousy, detachment, the compost heap

In the old days there were characters
and settings: if you wrote snow,
you could see wetness and whiteness

I am unable to say from what place, from which dream,
anything comes.

                If you were to commit a crime . . .