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I even begin to feel good.

I’m not done yet!

I will remain in the arena.

hail, Bastille Day!

hail all the old dogs!

hail you!

hail me!

that last good

night is not yet here.

going going gone

my wife doesn’t see much of me

anymore

since she got me this computer

for Xmas.

I never thought anything could consume

me like it

has.

the poems arrive by the

dozens

and yesterday there was even a decent bit

of prose.

I’ve now gone the complete route.

I once hand-printed all my poems and

stories.

then came the manual

typewriter.

then the electric typer.

and now this.

it’s as if I have been reborn.

I watch the words form on the

screen

and as I watch more and more

words

form.

and, actually, the content seems

to be

as good as ever.

things get said as they have

always been said.

only now it’s more like setting off

firecrackers or

exploding words into outer

space.

I’ve been told that the computer

can’t write for me.

hell, I don’t know, this thing

seems to have a

psyche

all its own

and it certainly spells

better than I

do.

there were always words

I wanted to use

but I was too lazy to

check the

spelling.

so I used a simpler version

or just didn’t

bother.

now I toss the word

in,

then ask the computer if

I’ve got it spelled

right.

there’s an old theory

that if you put ten thousand

monkeys in a room for

Eternity

they would eventually

rewrite every great novel

ever written,

word for word.

with a computer

they’d do it

in half an

hour.

anyhow, I’m more or less

one of those

monkeys now

and my wife hardly ever

sees me anymore, as I said

before.

I hear her coughing in the

next room

so I know that she is

there.

but that’s enough

computer talk.

it’s time for another

poem.

this is where they come for what’s left of your soul

the books are selling, there are critical articles, more and

more critical articles that claim my work is, indeed,

at last, pretty damned good.

I am being taught alongside some of the masters.

a dangerous time, a most dangerous time

for me.

if I accept my new position, then I must work from that new

position.

I must then attempt to hold my ground, not

despoil it.

but I have watched too many others

soften, lose their natural force.

too much acceptance destroys.

so listen, my fine fellows and ladies, I am going to

ignore your late applause,

I intend to still play it loose, commit my errors,

enrage the entrenched and piss upon your

guardians, angels and / or devils.

I intend to do what I

have to do, what I have always done.

it’s been too much fun to falter now.

you will not escape my iron grip

and I will escape

yours.

hot night

like this, sitting in my shorts, listening to a tenor

all the way from Cleveland

garnering applause on the radio.

I’ve never been to Cleveland.

I sit here in my shorts on a humid night

now listening to Ravel with my gut hanging out

over my shorts.

my soft white gut.

I draw on this cigar, inhale, then blow

blue smoke as

Ravel waltzes.

I read a fan letter written to me from Japan.

then I rip it once, twice, three times, trash

it.

young girls send me photos of their naked

selves.

blank-faced, I set my lighter to the photos,

turn them to twisted black

ash.

it’s midnight and I’m too dumb to

sweat.

“oil and natural gas,” says the man on the radio,

“we need oil and natural gas

for the nation’s energy needs.”

“fuck you, buddy,” I say.

I scratch, yawn, rise, walk

to where my little refrigerator holds food

and drink.

it takes me 7 steps to get there.

one for each decade.

did you know that

to this very day

nobody can figure out how

they built the

pyramids?

the x-bum

it was a good training ground out there

(although there were times

of fear and madness)

and there were times when it wasn’t kind

and there were times when my comrades were

cowardly

treacherous

or

debased.

it taught me also

that there was no bottom to life

you could always fall lower

into a bestial groveling

and when you reached

that point