My Heart I'm not going to cry all the time nor shall I laugh all the time, I don't prefer one "strain" to another. I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie, not just a sleeper, but also the big, overproduced first-run kind. I want to be at least as alive as the vulgar. And if some aficionado of my mess says "That's not like Frank!," all to the good! I don't wear brown and grey suits all the time, do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera, often. I want my feet to be bare, I want my face to be shaven, and my heart--you can't plan on the heart, but the better part of it, my poetry, is open.

I love you. I love you, but I’m turning to my verses and my heart is closing like a fist.

But it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night wondering whether you are any good or not and the only decision you can make is that you did it.

And don't worry about your lineage poetic or natural.

oh god it’s wonderful to get out of bed and drink too much coffee and smoke too many cigarettes and love you so much

I embraced a cloud but when I soared it rained.

The artificial is always innocent.