so then, I know you have your things too. it’s not the large tragedies that moil us to pieces—we are fucking well ready for those. it’s the little scratchings and drippings, the continuous stubbing of the toes and elbows, the car that won’t start, the piece of tooth that breaks off as you are biting into a peach, dirty stockings, a sudden face in the market goring your peace like a bull, a ring in the bathtub, constipation, insomnia, a dirty newspaper, toothpaste too sweet, a fingernail flipping back and ripping from the finger…these things again and again, the similar small biting donnybrook continuous hail…these tear us to the final pieces. ah ha.

James Lowell was the proprietor of Asphodel Books, Cleveland, an important dealer in underground and little press items in the sixties. When he was prosecuted for dealing in obscenity, a large number of leading authors contributed to a collection A Tribute to Jim Lowell (Cleveland, June 1967) to help raise funds for his defense.

[To Carl Weissner]

January 27, 1967

[* * *]—yes, I wrote an essay in defense of Lowell, literature, art, us, we’uns…. the vise closes in. the F.B.I. questions Blazek, asks about me. Richmond out on bail, bookstore still open, and he’s awaiting trial. yes, they picked up my The Genius of the Crowd at Lowell’s. d.a. levy who published that, and other things now hiding from the police, warrant out for him. but the police have not knocked at my door (about these matters) because all they have on me is that I write in a very plain and simple style and don’t even cuss too much—I am too god damned fucking mother fucking tired to cuss! [* * *]

I do not make it too well with the women because I refuse to throw them the smoke screen, and I really do not get enough good ass and I never will because if a woman’s soul is a sack of shit I will not fail to tell them so, esp. when I am drunk. there are 2 new women on my horizon now, hungry-eyed, trying to act decently human but they are really not decently human. I don’t mind that they are filled with snot and piss and shit and blood, with the newspaper print pasted above their eyebrows—it is the eventual explosive unfolding, the sharp claws stored in the coffee can. “hey, son, I gave you some pussy, now kiss my ass, run my errands, listen to my harpy song.” oye, oye, oye. [* * *]