wish me luck, baby, wish me everything; I am sad, I got the blues the blues the green blue purple blues. my my my.

[To Al Purdy]

October 11, 1965

[* * *] people keep sending me poems and novels to read and collections of poesy—I mean people I have never written to or heard of—and all the stuff is bad, bad, bad. I wonder if you realize how much bad stuff is written in all earnestness? and they’ll keep right on with it. thinking that they are undiscovered genius. I rec. a beautifully printed book of poems, fine paper, hardcover, and inscribed “to Buk…” and etc. an honor, sure, but I can’t even write this person and thank him because the poems are so flat and drivelling that they are not even bad—they don’t even exist. if you know the type I mean. yet I don’t throw a book away when it is sent to me in this way and I don’t know what to do with them. I guess there’ll be another one in the mail tomorrow. there are a lot of dead men sitting at typewriters. I would have quit long ago but when I saw the truly bad stuff that was being done, I couldn’t let go. [* * *]

[To Douglas Blazek]

October 23, 1965

[* * *] it has been 100 degrees for 3 or 4 days and everybody smells like shit and everybody is, of course. in from track, medium day, plus $32. the human race is an empty egg out there. the crowd is a dog made of sausage. I could not think of fucking or singing out there, or dreaming; only murder.—now back in the trough: cigar, beer, old hat bit. my guts are dropping out and I sit here pecking at the keys like a propped-up Hemingway with matchstick soul. and the typer seems shot. hope you can read.

back from Santa Fe, ya. [* * *] I was sick most of the time I was there but did hunk down quite a bit of beer and scotch and got into a little trouble. Webb always flips a bit when the image does not fit the peg but I can’t be bothered. one night I was quite drunk and locked out in the icy rain and knocking on doors but nobody wanted to let me in. somebody finally relented and gave me a long angry speech. shit on that. my father is dead. I am dead. [* * *] I got on the train and my foot began to swell. I walk around barefoot when drunk and all the glass and steel I had picked up decided to play death. I found a sadist doctor when I got into town and he sliced my heel open and dug and probed and dug. no shot, of course. German accent: “Vell, vell, you took it like a man!” “You enjoyed it more than I did,” I told him. “Nine, nine! you see I vuz only interested in seeing vat was in dere, I did not enjoy…” “make out the bill.” and that, was Santa Fe. [* * *]