I am not a counselor

nor an entertainer,

nor am I interested in

reading books of

poesy

or bedding down

or giving blurbs

or recommending unsung

so-called geniuses

to my

publisher.

when I was an unknown

writer

I sent my work

directly to the magazines

and the publishers,

never with a cover

letter,

and I never knocked on

anybody’s

door

and I never read my

work to my wives or

my girlfriends

or anybody.

when you are in a prize fight

you climb into the

ring,

you do it where it is

done.

and it’s not done at

literary parties or by

writing Burroughs or

Mailer

or Ferlinghetti.

you sit down at your

machine

and fire it into the

unknown,

and if you don’t have

a machine

you write it on the

walls or on the edges

of newspapers.

and you’ll keep doing

it,

doing it,

and if you’ve got

it,

the guts and the

laughter and the manner

of saying it

you’ll finally come

through.

forget everything

else.

the gods are good,

they only want to

make sure.

walking with the dead

and talking with the dead and driving the freeways

with the dead and standing in the supermarket

with the dead

what the doctor ordered is

not what I ordered

not what you ordered

not what we ordered.

take the whole thing back.

throw it out.

start over again.

up through the night

the way I can tell it is the Christmas

season is that the classical

music on the radio gets

bad.

I mean with an exception or two

we are left in a musical vacuum.

music

like any other creative endeavor

must have its own personal

meaning,

must find its own way.

it can’t be programmed by general

agreement

or somebody’s mother-in-law’s

concept of

what is appropriate

for the season.

things with their own power

and with a life of their own

go their own way

make their own statements

bring light by their own

magic.

it’s what makes death

bearable and life worth

discarding.

the fool dines out

I am with others, including my wife, it is a dark and

expensive place, we order wine, high-priced

stuff, the waiter brings it, applies corkscrew,

pulls, and the prong rips out of the cork leaving

said cork within the bottle, so he reinserts the corkscrew,

tugs, and it happens again—corkscrew in

the air, cork in the bottle.

“having a little trouble, eh?” I

ask him.

my wife digs an elbow to my ribs, the waiter goes off

for another bottle, returns, digs the corkscrew in again

—same thing: out comes the corkscrew without the cork.

“you need another opener,” I

suggest.

I get another dig in the ribs, the waiter glowers at me,

he’s enraged, gives it another try, same result.

“wow!” I say.

the others at the table look at me as if I had just been