big and bold and insane and daring

in color and wobble

30 feet high on spikes

CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK

asking for it

and if a man gives it to them he gets 5 years in jail

for rape. it doesn’t make

sense. [* * *]

Blazek’s Mimeo Press had published William Want-ling’s Down, off & out.

[To Douglas Blazek]

[June 2, 1965]

[* * *] this is now the best part—woman and 8 month old child gone to attend a poetry session weekly one a night somewhere and I sit here opening more beers and writing to somebody I have never seen and the kitchen light comes down and my fingers smack like drunk spiders on the keys and I don’t know what is next on the page, except same old alphabet of scrambled eggs of me trying to worm-out, attend, sing, pray, bullshit…meanwhile, thanks for the Want-ling, well-done—you give mimeo a live and foodish red-meat look that others fail to do. like me go get the Want-ling and check on the beer. also have a pint of scotch after I run through these 12 ½ quarts, so it figures to be a burning and perhaps ugly night, but maybe easy enough. wait. my good god, she’s put it away somewhere. I could look but it would take hours and by then too drunk to write. some of the poems went, or almost went for me. but I always got the feeling as if I were being kidded a bit—like the con with the tray under his shirt—but didn’t mind that too much; writing was clear and contained little poetic malarkey. on the capital punishment essay, I felt it began well when he spoke of society in the all-over scope but when he began to get down to his knitting he got drab, academic and wrote badly. the all-over book was good reading, tho, except is it nec. for poet to place month and year below each poem? isn’t this too precious? sometimes I think it is better to wonder when you did write the things, or, if you did. why pull at threads, tho, when the world is falling cesspool fat into its glory turds? I shouldn’t complain about dates at poem-bottoms; getting older, cranky. fits. Dreams of Miles Standish. fear of somebody smelling my dirty underwear.