A Coney Island of the Mind Quotes

“I once started out
to walk around the world
but ended up in Brooklyn,
that Bridge was too much for me.”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“I am waiting for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe for anarchy”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“[in the true mad north] of introspection,
where 'falcons of the inner eye'
dive and die, glimpsing in their
dying fall, all life's memory of existence.”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of day
performing entrechats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“Cast up
the heart flops over
gasping 'Love'

a foolish fish which tries to draw
its breath from flesh of air

And no one there to hear its death
among the sad bushes
where the world rushes by
in a blather of asphalt and delay”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“I once started out to walk around the world but ended up in Brooklyn.”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“Souls dance undressed/ together/ and like loiterers/ on the fringes of a fair/ we ogle the unobtainable/ imagined mystery/ Yet away around on the far side/ like a stage door of a circus tent/ is a wide vent in the battlements/ where even elephants/ waltz thru”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“You and me could really exist”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“I too have drunk and seen
the spider”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“I have dreamt that all my teeth fell out but my tongue lived to tell the tale”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“I flew too near the sun
and my wax wings fell off”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“I am going where turtles win
I am going
where conmen puke and die
Down the sad esplanades
of the official world.”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“her eyes downcast all the while/ and singing to herself”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“telling over to myself/ how beauty never dies/ but lies apart/ among the aborigines/ of art/ and far above the battlefields/ of love”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“Don’t Let That Horse . . .” from A Coney Island of the Mind.

Don’t let that horse
eat that violin

cried Chagall’s mother

But he
kept right on
painting

And became famous

And kept on painting
The Horse With Violin In Mouth

And when he finally finished it
he jumped up upon the horse
and rode away
waving the violin

And then with a low bow gave it
to the first naked nude he ran across


And there were no strings
attached”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“is where I first/ fell in love/ with unreality”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“and I am waiting/ for Alice in Wonderland/ to retransmit to me/ her total dream of innocence”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“I have seen the Virgin
in an appletree at Chartres
And Saint Joan burn
at the Bella Union.
I have seen giraffes in junglejims
their necks like love
wound around the iron circumstances
of the world.
I have seen the Venus Aphrodite
armless in her drafty corridor.
I have heard a siren sing
at One Fifth Avenue.
I have seen the White Goddess dancing
in the Rue des Beaux Arts
on the Fourteenth of July
and the Beautiful Dame Without Mercy
picking her nose in Chumley's.”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“watching the world walk by
in its curious shoes”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“I have heard a hundred housebroken Ezra Pounds.
They should all be freed.
It is long since I was a herdsman.”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“Blink at the sunned scratch
and stumble into silence”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“Not like Dante
discovering a commedia
upon the slopes of heaven
I would paint a different kind
of Paradiso
in which the people would be naked
as they always are
in scenes like that because it is supposed to be
a painting of their souls but there would be no anxious angels telling them
how heaven is
the perfect picture of
a monarchy and there would be no fires burning
in the hellish holes below in which I might have stepped
nor any altars in the sky except
fountains of imagination”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“Truth is not the secret of a few'
yet
you would maybe think so
the way some
librarians
and cultural ambassadors and
especially museum directors
act

you'd think they had a corner
on it
the way they
walk around shaking
their high heads and
looking as if they never
went to the bath
room or anything

But I wouldn't blame them
if I were you
They say the Spiritual is best conceived
in abstract terms
and then too
walking around in museums always makes me
want to
'sit down'
I always feel so
constipated
in those
high altitudes”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“Sometime during eternity
some guys show up
and one of them
who shows up real late
is a kind of carpenter
from some square-type place
like Galilee
and he starts wailing
and claiming he is hep
to who made heaven
and earth
and that the cat
who really laid it on us
is his Dad”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“And heard the green birds singing/ from the other side of silence”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“and balancing on eye beams/ above a sea of faces/ paces his way/ to the other side of day”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“Oh no I have not lain
on Beauty Rests like this
afraid to rise at night
for fear that I might somehow miss
some movement beauty might have made”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

“I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind