good that All the Assholes and Mine went. writing it so soon after, I didn’t know if I was caught in the stream or could see it go by. and yet maybe too much objectiveness tends to let the air out of the tires. that’s the trouble with most literature: everybody’s so cool and superior to the action that it becomes a word-game, a chess game—and the King is asleep and the Queen wears kotex and the Knights and Castles stumble and the Pawns, well, they don’t matter, do they? [* * *]

[To Douglas Blazek]

April 4, 1966

[* * *] of course it would be sweet if you could get hold of a printing press; it would add to what is already there. Ole has so much more lifeblood than the others that it’s…no contest, riot, runaway. I hope that a press will not delete the beautiful madness from your silly head. I don’t think it will. as much as you hate it and know that it is killing you, that factory, without wanting to, is also keeping you alive—to this extent: that those few moments given to you—you realize that here the god damn sun gotta finally shine, no lies, no bullshit, words cutting into paper like flowers, like swords, like screams, like paint. your family too, as much as you love them, will sometimes think you are mad, think you are cruel, because you will want to cop some moments from them too. but they ought to know that without your writing and without your editing, without your crazy colored paper and your crazy debts, you would REALLY BE A TERRIBLE FATHER, you would be the average American citizen male breadwinner and he is a horror to behold, he is a sight to make one vomit blood and gut and hope all out, for even when he smiles even when he is kind even when he is a winner a lover a father a playboy a champ, he stinks he is rot, he is a flower without a head, a plant without a root, a slab of meat butchered and dressed in clothing. I’ve got a hunch your family senses some of this, senses your need to hold to walls, to cry at night, to go down in your basement and play with silly piles of papers. so, I’m not scared of you getting a press, I am not scared of you dying. I am scared of me dying. so many of my poems are coming back. one guy told me, “I also rejected Allen Ginsberg.” fine. but means little to me, for I have also rejected Allen Ginsberg. but worse, I read the poems, and it was true—they weren’t any good. mainly because one line didn’t even relate to the other. I’d say one thing, then jump right off into space with something else. and I wasn’t even drunk. maybe that was the trouble. yet, it’s good to fail. I don’t say I had a belly laugh on myself but I did see that the way is curious, thorny and never clear. I am lucky too—to fail a lot. if you fail 40 times, 41 is not so bad. keeps the bowels loose, keeps you human enough to hope, and the miracle becomes mainly that you have typewriter and paper and that something does come out. umm, how I remember the hospital; operated on a Wednesday, didn’t shit until sometime Sunday afternoon. shit is important too—as long as it’s your own. what? [* * *]