TAO LIN

If you haven't heard of Tao Lin by now, then you obviously don't/can't read. 
He's a bit of a New York phenomenon and many a blogger/journalist/writer has tried to decipher not only his writing style, but who he actually is as an individual.


He's probably become one of my favourite authors of our seedy little generation of writers. Mainly because I seriously can't figure him out and also because he writes these simple one liners that jab me in the heart so quick and fast that I get temporarily breathless.


One line in particular;


"I want to hold your face with my face like a hand"


How good is that sentence? You have to stop and picture it in your head, and once I had the image, I could definitely relate to wanting to rest faces with a lover.


That's the wicked beauty of Tao Lin's writing, it often makes sense to your heart first and then your mind follows.


He's the author of a few little paperbacks, the better known being 'Shoplifting from American Apparel', 'Richard Yates' and 'Bed'.


Here is some of Tao's poetry and if you want to get more acquainted with his writing then I recommend buying his books from amazon.





the secret of life is decisiveness
and to describe something
i see the distance and move immediately into it
now i am really alone
from here i know these things: that a hamster is a lonely fist
that my poems exist to dispel irrational angers, that i want to hold your face
with my face
like a hand
the secret of life is that i miss you, and this describes life
tonight my heart feels shiny and calm as a soft wet star
i describe it from a distance, then move quickly away
- from cognitive-behavioral therapy by Tao Lin

i will learn how to love a person and then i will teach you and then we will know
seen from a great enough distance i cannot be seen
i feel this as an extremely distinct sensation
of feeling like shit; the effect of small children
is that they use declarative sentences and then look at your face
with an expression that says, ‘you will never do enough
for the people you love’; i can feel the universe expanding
and it feels like no one is trying hard enough
the effect of this is an extremely shitty sensation
of being the only person alive; i have been alone for a very long time
it will take an extreme person to make me feel less alone
the effect of being alone for a very long time
is that i have been thinking very hard and learning
about mortality, loneliness, people, society, and love; i am afraid
that i am not learning fast enough; i can feel the universe expanding
and it feels like no one has ever tried hard enough; when i cried in your room
it was the effect of an extremely distinct sensation that ‘i am the only person
alive,’ ‘i have not learned enough,’ and ‘i can feel the universe expanding
and making things be further apart
and it feels like a declarative sentence
whose message is that we must try harder’
- from cognitive-behavioral therapy by Tao Lin