[* * *] your problem is the same as mine—difficult to transmit the living juice from gut to outside speech, almost impossible. and. not to pat our broken backs, but I think that’s the way the good guys fail. watch the fluid-speech, interesting boys—they have coconut brains. anyhow, you ever hit town, mother, phone. I will never forget the old long letter days, the days of Confessions and Assholes. them was good daze, babe. you in your factory. me where I am now. both being burned alive and not a fucking thing to do about it. bung-holed, axed, knifed, smeared in our own bloodshit and then told by an eyeless rat with a tin badge that we were not doing well enough, missing too many mondays and spitting out blood into the urinals. your letters got me through some days. it was a time. [* * *]

[To Douglas Blazek]

November 3, 1967

[* * *] on the dick-print thing I thought it over and I can’t help you. at first I thought SENSATIONAL, why not? like Hedy Lamar strung to a cross at any age. but later I got to thinking—no, dad, you’re too OLD to print your cock across a cover. leave it to some hairy young cat. I am not crying the old-age blues, Blaz, I mean it just doesn’t work to have some old beggar like me print his cock. it shuffles over into the area of madness that way, which is o.k., only I am mad enough crazy now. I hope you understand and do not think me chicken-shit. I go on instinct, and for me the thing does not seem spiritually sound. o.k. I let you down.

[To Louis Delpino]

November 7, 1967

I’ve kind of dropped out of the letter-writing phrase [sic] in order to batch up enough glue to hold myself together a bit longer. the letter-writing thing can become a trap—I started by writing one or 2, then it got to three or four, then it got to 13 or 14, and all I was doing was writing letters. now, if this were my prime purpose, fine enough, but there are other things to do along the way too—like taking a good crap or inking out a sketch or catching a few winners at the track, or just staring at walls. wondering about toes and your waste, and what the game was about. there are TIMES TO DO NOTHING. very important times. hard to get between women and jobs and sickness and and and…so, the writing of too many letters to too many people can get to be like carrying 50 pound rocks back and forth during your few moments of leisure. but people will get pissed; they will think you’re up tight or writing President Johnson or essays for the Atlantic. me, I’m hanging onto the slippery walls.

[To Douglas Blazek]

December 16, 1967

hello virile captain slugger of the gross elephants: