Michael Ryan Quotes & Sayings

But the truth enters at the end of life.
It enters like oxygen into every cell
and the madness it feeds there in some
is only a lucid metaphor
for something long burned to nothing,
like a star.
How do you get under your desire?
How do you peel away each desire
like ponderous clothes, one at a time,
until what's underneath is known? — Michael Ryan

Consider A Move
The steady time of being unknown,
in solitude, without friends,
is not a steadiness that sustains.
I hear your voice waver on the phone:
Haven't talked to anyone for days.
I drive around. I sit in parking lots.
The voice zeroes through my ear, and waits.
What should I say? There are ways
to meet people you will want to love?
I know of none. You come out stronger
having gone through this? I no longer
believe that, if I once did. Consider a move,
a change, a job, a new place to live,
someplace you'd like to be. That's not it,
you say. Now time turns back. We almost touch.
Then what is? I ask. What is? — Michael Ryan

Culture becomes visible when we travel between " cultures " and when we look back in time to other " cultures " than our own. — Michael Ryan