you might have guessed by now that the literary gang is an unclean mob—dollar crazy as any manufacturer, as any pimp, as any anything. and cold, and cold. they pretend to have intelligence, and they write so seemingly of justice and life, almost as if they knew something. but the dirty cocksuckers would sell you off in a minute; a pawnbroker has more conscience and more heart. the Arts, generally, are the hiding place of the weak and the imbecilic. I know I know I know. I am not knocking Art as a contrivance, as a good bell ringing inside my hollow head; I am knocking the polluted stream, the turds. you know.

yet maybe I am just talking talking talking. the longer I live the less I know. maybe death is just eliminating everything—life is a turd—you pop it out and you are ready. I mean, each day I get a little simpler: I believe less, I feel less, I realize less. I like to watch flies now or look at coffeepots or listen to refrigerator sounds, sounds like god-voices. I hear. isn’t this what a child does? I want it easy; I don’t even want to win. of course, there has been a lot of this, even when I am fighting a man and he is intent upon killing me, I cannot believe him, I cannot believe what is happening and I cannot become truly angry. there are 2 things that bother me, that make me weak in the world:

1: I have never been lonely.

2: I have never been angry.

and the third thing:

I fuck with the Arts.

drinking is only to jell the parts that have been taken apart by factories or whores or a faceful of busses. I mean, that it brings me back to the basics of myself, whatever those basics may be. if drinking destroys the brain, fine. for what my brain has seen it yearns destruction.

god, I wish I had the guts and style and cement and vastness of a Jeffers—clean through rock into an eagle’s eye, and then behind stone, hacking, sounding. I have some of this but not enough, and meanwhile I jump through all sorts of weird hoops at others’ behest, and I get rapped and trapped bit my god by bit until I am hanging by a finger, by a thin gutstring in the middle of an empty sky. get me? melodramatic? o, hell yes—96,000 SEASONS IN HELL ON OVERTIME. [* * *]

and here I go down to poke my smashed head into a doorway. I really don’t want to go. I don’t want to do anything. I lose 3 days at the track, harness races, sunshine, the quiet drink from my flask on the grandstand steps, the looking at the legs of women I don’t know the name of. I could weep for my quiet freedom, yet somebody sends me a railroad ticket and I play it through. maybe it is that I have seen enough hell; maybe it is that I don’t want to see anymore. yet, I guess, there I will be getting on that train 12:30 p.m. thursday, my face twisted into nothing, sitting down, waiting for the thing to roll, wondering what ass I will draw for a seat partner and very glad the 2 pints are in the cloth bag over my head.