the average person has largely and finally already left the earth, my friend. they generally leave about the age of 5, although some stay a bit longer. tough for you, mother, but you are still here. your letters and poems get better, better, as I shrivel up into bologna-string walking. have you ever seen a bologna-string walking? Death is 2 balls without a head. Death is not being able to possess a good woman because I am dirty from factories and alleys and sluggings and hospitals and marriages and shackjobs, and poor, poor, poor, poor crippled dirt. wine bottles, nights of a steaming light bulb, scribbling on little slips of paper and unable to read them in the morning or at noon or ever.

death is all this waiting without screaming

death is bread rotting in the heat

and 90 million rats and roaches

death is a sea of piss

death is a sophisticated afternoon in Santa Fe

with nobody saying what they are thinking

maybe it’s the heat, kid, I am really snarling through these thin rented cardboard walls. how much separates me from the loony bin? sometimes down at work I feel like slugging somebody. no hatred, only the zero complex. I want to bust something. sometimes it happens by itself. same thing happened to somebody that happened to me in 53 or 54 or whenever it was. the belly broke open and the blood came out, out, out. he was dead by the time he reached the hospital. the bad life. I whine before I turn out the lights; I pray for spastics and dwarfs, Pal, I pray for scrub women, Pal, I pray for frightened women of some seeming beauty who play their hand and exchange one rich man for a richer man. I pray for the nail that enters the hand that enters the wood, I pray that that nail may not be rusty. Pal.

a couple of old wrinkled-up women down at work are trying to fuck me. they know that I am whipped. one of them has a young girl’s ass and legs but she must be a thousand years old. “I am getting a new Mustang. will you teach me how to drive?” “I’ll drive you, baby, I’ll drive you!!” “he, hehe, hehehe, that’s what I thought! an’ I want ya ta meet my sister too!” looks like I gotta fuck the whole family. I’ll probably pass. it’s a hairy drippy drizzling game. it’s only when I get drunk that I imagine that I am the lover. what nonsense. and Rupert Brooke wrote better too. but he didn’t have any sense and decided to go to war. and try to be lucky. bullets are built for poets. I knew this one guy, not a bad writer or human being either (sometimes there’s a difference) who said, “But suppose some stupid cocksucker points a machinegun at me and squeezes the trigger?” “if you go, he will.” he went—it happened. m.g. slugs. but they’ll always find an excuse for another war, that’s all right. but they’ll bust you for a little game of pot. or jail a whore for selling her pussy. or blame a homo for being a homo. or fire a man for being 10 minutes late to work. or jail you for being drunk on the streets. or run a woman out of the country for not believing in God (Mad Murray) and saying so and getting them to ban prayer in schools because she figured the kids should have a choice. but War? stockpiles? shit??? why not? listen, I don’t mean to preach here but a little drunk a little tired—up all night at work and then the racetrack today and now almost midnight, no sleep, so the seams ripping a bit.