PRESSURE PRESS ARCHIVE

DESIGNING A NEW CREATURE it's not like i converse much, unless opened by bourbon & smoke, unless so trapped by ignorant false involvements it's no option i'm profane. i'm easily hypnotized by people who talk a lot, whether a novelist or factory ego fucks; i hear their SOUNDS, not their ideas & points. spoken language is an utter contradiction, i believe, the curse of our species. words roll out galactic paradox. for why? for what silly purpose? yes, i classify myself an agnostic, altho not necessarily. the human being is failing, but whether a spiritual being is rapturously waiting to judge our shit, i don't think, nor feel. imagination is existence too. death is a dream-plane fizzle. religious predictions, the laws of christian order, buddha, the hatred of the koran, all these human reasonings, anger me; it's incomprehensible life is so locked, but the prisoners are happy! we've existed longer than 2,000 revolutions around the sun. what grand design? what manifest destiny? bullshit. it's language that stuffed larks in our mouths. sitting here now, writing on my gray personal word processor, i can certainly attest to the fact of paradox, to futility, & all those bad words; i'm sick i'm composing this prose to you. i do mean to communicate further than word-sculpture visions of intellect. a month & a half ago i was laid-off from my 12-year factory job. i was insane, i don't deny that, a decade of steady graveyard-shift life-style validates insanity, the repetitiveness, lack of sleep, immersion in sour mash kentucky whiskey, skunk buds broken on 3 a.m. lunch-breaks, wars with boys with power, deceptions, & dickheads, contributed to my harried flailing. i was a morphine-brave viet cong suicide maniac running at unloading helicopters shooting away. i was dying on the machines, much to the delight of the production supervisor. he arranged conspiracies to intensify my intensities. i was the top-wage operator on the floor, i did not want the politics of advancement or change, & i wasn't going to quit. when the business was surging with profits, i was left alone; but when our economy imploded, i was the first operator to be laid-off in the non-union cock-suck shop. i feel betrayed by my employer, but at the same time, thankful. i was insane. i'm presently financially devastated, but isn't everybody. now that there's time to write i've been writing. after i scream the kids to school & diane off to her part-time job i spend the hours of morning here in my upstairs room. i've produced a new poetry manuscript titled THE GOOD LIFE, sardonically titled of course, waiting to hear from an underground publisher if he wants to read it, make it a book. it's in the neighborhood of 80 pages. i think it's my best work to date, but without an "audience", a reading public, what is it but papers in a folder on the floor. yesterday i mailed a few new poems & reviews i wrote to lonnie sherman, there across town. he understands my vulgar inclinations enough to take everything i write with a grain of salt or a glass of wine. i write for guys like lonnie who appreciate poetic dramatics, the cosmological beatitude stoning the heart with "art", with metaphoric jazz perplexity, with the wild blood of expression. there are simply not many men, or women, attuned to the communicative properties of poetry in america, where freedom to create is poetry's future & hope; unfortunately americans view the art with an apathetic disgust. we're visual creatures, give us paintings, videos, MTV, screenplays, theatre, logical technology of fire & flag. no goddamn sonnet. no modern ode mirror of chaos smashing our comfortable souls. we read too many written words to bother with a silly thing like a poem. it's incredibly obvious a poet's audience is poets. lonnie sherman is a poet, tho he's ceased writing. he's not one to like spot-lights or judgements. for him, a poem is a revelation which does not occur frequently; he will not pervert poetry to be a discipline, work. i, on the other multitudes of hand, consider every day, situation, emotion, perception, dream to be a seed of poetry, & my fingers are life-giving, or poisoned, water. germination. what a deep, dark, curled word. admittedly i'm listening to classical radio & my dog charlie is asleep by the door, i'm chain-smoking like a communist, unemployed, sick of my friend joe & all his problems; i can't hear the door-bell over the glory of violins, stay away today joe. he was recently jailed & i sprung him. he's a huge, drunk, frenetic amplification now. i don't have an ear remaining, nor much of a heart for the continuing shit. i have work to do, a struggle to maintain, a family to keep from danger. he's insulting me with his psychotic obsessions needing sympathy. my sympathy is dry amidst crashing cymbals. you lost. i'd now suggest you murder linda. go ahead. then suicide it, fuck it. leave me money or stuff i can use. you've been one of the subjects of my writing for a long, long time, & at precise, sarcastic moments, call me dad. thanks, dad. you're welcome, son. kill the cunt, pay don the cash to do it if you want, he's game, & professionally heartless enough to offer viable methods for her extinction. when it's carried out, when don phones the pass-word code of completion, suck the barrel & squeeze the trigger. splatter. the case will close, don'll have his thousand, & i'll write you a poem.