Frank Stanford Quotes & Sayings

It wasn't a dream it was a flood — Frank Stanford

Baby one night somebody
Going to strike a match on a tombstone
And read your name. — Frank Stanford

-I have dreamed of escape, a forever

-to burn your suicide notes she read in Braille

-and the stars of dawn's trousseau — Frank Stanford

tonight the gars on trees are swords in the hands of knights
the stars are like twenty-seven dancing russians and the wind
is — Frank Stanford

I saw the black seam of your stocking
Running down the side of the mountain like a creek
I put the whiskey down and listened

from "Blue Yodel of the Desperado — Frank Stanford

I'll just bleed so the stars can have something dark to shine in — Frank Stanford

because none of you know what you want follow me
because I'm not going anywhere
I'll just bleed so the stars can have something dark to shine in
look at my legs I am the Nijinsky of dreams — Frank Stanford

I don't believe in tame poetry ... Poetry busts guts. — Frank Stanford

before men could speak they enjoyed confounding another with signs
they enjoyed this as much as a mirror enjoys an image
as much as the evening like a ship enjoys a sapphire grave — Frank Stanford

Weariness of Men

My grandmother said when she was young
The grass was so wild and high
You couldn't see a man on horseback.

In the fields she made out
Three barns,
Dark and blown down from the weather
Like her husbands.

She remembers them in the dark,
Cursing the beasts,
And how they would leave the bed
In the morning,
The dead grass of their eyes
Stacked against her. — Frank Stanford

No one knows how to love anybody's trouble. — Frank Stanford

Dreamt by a Man in a Field

I am thinking of the dead
Who are still with us.
They are not like us, they are
Young and beautiful,
On their way in the rain
To meet their lovers.
On their way with their dark umbrellas,
Always laughing, so quick,
Like limbs flying back
In a boat before night,
So constant,
Like the glass floats
The fisherman use in Japan.
But for them there is no moon,
For us the same news
We do not receive. — Frank Stanford