I am learning by the week, but my poesy is still not my own. New rhyme, new me me me in words. I am not all this carven rhetoric.

The hero surviving his own murder, his own suicide, his own addiction, surviving his own disappearance from the scene

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whit- man, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!

I know I'm not God, are you? Don't be silly. God? God? Everybody's God? Don't be silly.

what sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination

in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night

The parts that embarrass you the most are usually the most interesting poetically, are usually the most naked of all, the rawest, the goofiest, the strangest and most eccentric and at the same time, most representative, most universal... That was something I earned from Kerouac, which was that spontaneous writing could be embarrassing... The cure for that is to write the thing down which you will not publish and which you won't show people. To write secretly... so you can actually be free to say anything you want.