I did not make work tonight, and so there it goes: the job on the edge of the cliff again, and I do not like work and have no trade but I do like to eat, so this is basic, the basic training of slaves to fear, but I wrote some poems and it does not matter whether they are good or not—yes, it does, everything should be as sharp as possible: I talk like a fool; what I mean is, it is good to hear the typewriter running again across my brain like a lawnmower or a machinegun or what is left of anything. You’ve got to get the idea of this breakfast nook here, it’s always hot, and mostly always beer, but sometimes just the window and I look out the window and like any other damn-fool writer I begin to wonder where the soul went, and I used to think this was foolish, but no more, I know that the soul does go: ZIP, and then that’s that. Only you don’t think of it like an expensive item, like a big diamond, more like a good solid piece of ass with eyes of sea that walked out for somebody with more $$$ or more dangle or more natural decency toward his fellow being, ow. [* * *] There are good days, tho, when the whole world unfolds…unfolds like what? like a lie. Most of us hold onto jobs if we can, sell brooms door to door, work in post offices, slaughterhouses, collection agencies, all that hell. Hell and hell and hell, on and on. I no longer wonder about Rimbaud running the guns and hunting gold and going buggy in Africa. He only wanted time to write poetry, I think. And he wanted it so bad that he didn’t write anymore. Starvation may or may not make artists; I only know that it gets very tiresome to STARVE while guys pass you on the streets with faces that look like dishpans and bellyfuls of porterhouse and fries and all those things that kill: like penthouse blondes and collections of Mozart, ow. I mean, I write better, I think, when I am not worried about the belly or the rent or scraping up a piece of ass. These things are primaries and when you get them out of the way you can begin to worry or unworry about a hell of a lot of other things you wouldn’t have time to think about in the first place. I don’t mean I am for Harvard educations. I’m not. If I had one I would probably say they are o.k. but since I don’t have one they can’t be o.k. for me because it is not happening. I paid the rent today and if I walk on the job tomorrow and they do not barber me too much we will have PEACE for 3 or 4 days, maybe. There is always this sense of futility and disgust that you have been hammered finally into something which you do not WANT TO BE, and as long as you are conscious of this and not man enough or clever enough to find a way out, you are going to be pretty generally unhappy like with hot tongs gripping your guts most of the time. This is sad but it makes me glad I’ve written a few poems today, bad and/or?, and this is madness too, I know, a kind of screaming. Yet I know people, other people who do this; they send me their poems in the mail. Well, it’s nice to be selected to have poems sent to if you are not an editor; if you are an editor, well, it’s just another day’s work. Well, most of the poems are bad, to me, that is. I don’t like them. I read them and say, Christ ugg, and throw them away. Yet these people think I am human, more human than an editor, and this is all right. But what I get from this mainly is the idea of all these people going wacky mad etc., out there really, while in actuality they are working as waitresses, truck drivers or male hairdressers. I prefer the poems from the ladies especially when they enclose their photos. But what I mean is: there are all these people out there going mad and writing bad poetry, and when somebody does SHOVE THROUGH it is kind a landmark, don’t you think? Now Ginsberg bothered me a long time, and then somebody told me Burroughs got a regular check from the Burroughs adding machine co. and some of the floss fell away, let alone the homo bit which DOES bother no matter how humanitarian you try to get. But you’ve got to hand it to Ginsberg. He’s gotten away. He’s sitting in India, which is something. I guess they’ve got good beer in India and I imagine now and then Corso comes to see him, which will later give them both something to talk about write about, a kind of Lawrence-Huxley mess, you know the people bite on this and get excited. The only people who come to see me are winos who need enough change to round out 64 cents. But Ginsberg has gotten out of it somehow so he has time to write even if he ends up writing badly. It’s a gathering of dust and electrodes and a vomiting out, later. But he’s got a better chance than if he were working in a Chinese Laundry or as Secretary of State—IF HE REMAINS UNPROFESSIONAL. But the problem is not Ginsberg tonight, it is me. I feel like a sow or an edge of dust of a lamp shade in the attic. I do not want attention; I want myself and they are tearing the arms of my mind apart. The only thing which saves me from cutting my belly out like an apple pie is that I am a coward, and anyway I have so many things wrong with me now that any one of them could take care of the situation with less clutter. God save the King and send in the longshots. If people can set themselves on fire in the streets, I can have another cigarette. They have turned off the refrigerator and the beer is warm. I must wash my stockings.