We'll take our vengeance now!

McConn, enroute from L.A. to some

rumored home,

killing the hours till the bars opened

stranded on Point Richmond when they closed

the night before,

thinking finally he had come among friends

or at least one.

We rang for Luboff

on the pay phone, but there was

no contact

Some tortured beast of a bad loser has already

croaked him, said McConn

We'll have a drink.

But the Mariners' Tavern was not open

for twenty minutes, so we read

a newspaper

and saw where just about everybody

had been fucked in the face

or some other orifice

or opening, or possibility

for one good reason or another

by the time the Chronicle went to press

before last midnight.

We rang for the editor

but the switchboard clamped him off.

Get a lawyer, I said. These swine have gone

far enough.

But the lawyers were all in bed

Finally we found one, limp from an orgy and

too much sleep

Eating cheese blintzes with sour cream and gin

on a redwood balcony with a

fine exposure.

Get your ass up, I said. It's Sunday and

the folks are in church. Now is the time to

lay a writ on them,

Cease and Desist

Specifically Luboff and the big mongers,

the slumfeeders, the perverts

and the pious.

The legal man agreed

We had a case and indeed a duty to

Right these Wrongs, as it were

The Price would be four thousand in front and

ten for the nut.

I wrote him a check on the Sawtooth

National Bank,

but he hooted at it

While rubbing a special oil on

his palms

To keep the chancres from itching

beyond endurance

On this Sabbath.

McConn broke his face with a running

Cambodian chop, then we

drank his gin, ate his blintzes

But failed to find anyone

to rape

and went back to the Mariners' Tavern

to drink in the sun.

Later, from jail

I sent a brace of telegrams

to the right people,

explaining my position.

Spider Magazine vol. I, no. 7, October 13, 1965

"Genius 'Round the World Stands Hand in Hand, and

One Shock of Recognition Runs the Whole Circle 'Round"

-- ART LlNKLETTER

I live in a quiet place where any sound at night means something is about to happen: You come awake fast -- thinking, what does that mean?

Usually nothing. But sometimes. . . it's hard to adjust to a city gig where the night is full of sounds, all of them comfortably routine. Cars, horns, footsteps. . . no way to relax; so drown it all out with the fine white drone of a cross-eyed TV set. Jam the bugger between channels and doze off nicely. . .

Ignore that nightmare in the bathroom. Just another ugly refugee from the Love Generation, some doom-struck gimp who couldn't handle the pressure. My attorney has never been able to accept the notion -- often espoused by reformed drug abusers and especially popular among those on probation -- that you can get a lot higher without drugs than with them.