James Kavanaugh
Books by James Kavanaugh
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Will You Be My Friend?
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Laughing Down Lonely Canyons
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Quotes by James Kavanaugh
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I was born to catch dragons in their dens / And pick flowers / To tell tales and laugh away the morning / To drift and dream like a lazy stream / And walk barefoot across sunshine days.
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Come to the beach with meAnd watch the pelicans die,Hear their feeble screamsCalling to an empty skyWhere once they playedAnd scouted for food,Not scavenging like the gullsBut plummeting unafraidInto friendly waters.Come to the beach with meAnd watch the pelicans die,Listen to their feeble screamsCalling to an empty sky.Maybe Christ will walk byAnd save them in their final toilOr work a miracle from the shore,A courtesy of Union Oil.Come to the beach with meAnd watch the pelicans die.My God! They'll never fly again.It's worse than Normandy somehow,For there we only murdered men.
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Where are you hiding my love?Each day without you will never come again.Even today you missed a sunset on the ocean,A silver shadow on yellow rocks I saved for you,A squirrel that ran across the road,A duck diving for dinner.My God! There may be nothing left to show youSave wounds and wearinessAnd hopes grown dead,And wilted flowers I picked for you a lifetime ago,Or feeble steps that cannot run to hold you,Arms too tired to offer you to a roaring wind,A face too wrinkled to feel the ocean's spray.
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I saw my face todayAnd it looked older,Without the warmth of wisdomOr the softnessBorn of pain and waiting.The dreams were gone from my eyes,Hope lost in hollownessOn my cheeks,A finger of deathPulling at my jaws.So I did my push-upsAnd wondered if I'd ever find you,To see my faceWith friendlier eyes than mine.
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Little world, full of little peopleshouting for recognition, screaming for love, Rolling world, teeming with millions,carousel of the hungry,Is there food enough? Wheat and corn will not do.The fat are the hungriest of all, the skinny the most silent.
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I played God todayAnd it was fun!I made animals that men had never seenSo they would stop and scratch their headsInstead of scowling.I made words that men had never heardSo they would stop and stare at meInstead of running.And I made love that laughedSo men would giggle like childrenInstead of sighing.Tomorrow, perhaps, I won't be GodAnd you will know itBecause you won't see any three-headed catsOr bushes with bells on...I wish I could always play GodSo that lonely men could laugh!
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Little world, full of scars and gashes, ripened with another's pain,Your flowers feed on carrion--so do your birds;Men feed on each other because you taught them life was cheap,Flowing from your endless womb without pain or understanding.No midwife caresses your flesh or bathes clean your progeny,Life spurts from you, little world,and you regard it with disdain.Only bruised men sense your cruelty, men whose life has lost its meaning.
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Now he haunts me seldom: some fierce umbilical is broken,I live with my own fragile hopes and sudden rising despair.Now I do not weep for my sins; I have learned to love themAnd to know that they are the wounds that make love real.His face illudes me; his voice, with its pity, does not ring in my ear.His maxims memorized in boyhood do not make fruitless and pointless my experience.I walk alone, but not so terrified as when he held my hand.I do not splash in the blood of his sonnor hear the crunch of nails or thorns piercing protesting flesh.I am a boy again--I whose boyhood was turned to manhood in a brutal myth.Now wine is only wine with drops that do not taste of blood.The bread I eat has too much pride for transubstantiation,I, too--and together the bread and I embrace,Each grateful to be what we are, each loving from our own reality.
Read quote -
I saw my face todayAnd it looked older,Without the warmth of wisdomOr the softnessBorn of pain and waiting.The dreams were gone from my eyes,Hope lost in hollownessOn my cheeks,A finger of deathPulling at my jaws.So I did my push-upsAnd wondered if I'd ever find you,To see my faceWith friendlier eyes than mine.
Read quote -
Where are you hiding my love?Each day without you will never come again.Even today you missed a sunset on the ocean,A silver shadow on yellow rocks I saved for you,A squirrel that ran across the road,A duck diving for dinner.My God! There may be nothing left to show youSave wounds and wearinessAnd hopes grown dead,And wilted flowers I picked for you a lifetime ago,Or feeble steps that cannot run to hold you,Arms too tired to offer you to a roaring wind,A face too wrinkled to feel the ocean's spray.
Read quote -
Come to the beach with meAnd watch the pelicans die,Hear their feeble screamsCalling to an empty skyWhere once they playedAnd scouted for food,Not scavenging like the gullsBut plummeting unafraidInto friendly waters.Come to the beach with meAnd watch the pelicans die,Listen to their feeble screamsCalling to an empty sky.Maybe Christ will walk byAnd save them in their final toilOr work a miracle from the shore,A courtesy of Union Oil.Come to the beach with meAnd watch the pelicans die.My God! They'll never fly again.It's worse than Normandy somehow,For there we only murdered men.
Read quote -
Now he haunts me seldom: some fierce umbilical is broken,I live with my own fragile hopes and sudden rising despair.Now I do not weep for my sins; I have learned to love themAnd to know that they are the wounds that make love real.His face illudes me; his voice, with its pity, does not ring in my ear.His maxims memorized in boyhood do not make fruitless and pointless my experience.I walk alone, but not so terrified as when he held my hand.I do not splash in the blood of his sonnor hear the crunch of nails or thorns piercing protesting flesh.I am a boy again--I whose boyhood was turned to manhood in a brutal myth.Now wine is only wine with drops that do not taste of blood.The bread I eat has too much pride for transubstantiation,I, too--and together the bread and I embrace,Each grateful to be what we are, each loving from our own reality.
Read quote -
Little world, full of little peopleshouting for recognition, screaming for love, Rolling world, teeming with millions,carousel of the hungry,Is there food enough? Wheat and corn will not do.The fat are the hungriest of all, the skinny the most silent.
Read quote -
I was born to catch dragons in their dens / And pick flowers / To tell tales and laugh away the morning / To drift and dream like a lazy stream / And walk barefoot across sunshine days.
Read quote -
Little world, full of scars and gashes, ripened with another's pain,Your flowers feed on carrion--so do your birds;Men feed on each other because you taught them life was cheap,Flowing from your endless womb without pain or understanding.No midwife caresses your flesh or bathes clean your progeny,Life spurts from you, little world,and you regard it with disdain.Only bruised men sense your cruelty, men whose life has lost its meaning.
Read quote -
I played God todayAnd it was fun!I made animals that men had never seenSo they would stop and scratch their headsInstead of scowling.I made words that men had never heardSo they would stop and stare at meInstead of running.And I made love that laughedSo men would giggle like childrenInstead of sighing.Tomorrow, perhaps, I won't be GodAnd you will know itBecause you won't see any three-headed catsOr bushes with bells on...I wish I could always play GodSo that lonely men could laugh!
Read quote -
There are men too gentle to live among wolves.
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