To write about the monstrous sense of alienation the poet feels in this culture of polarized hatreds is a way of staying sane. With the poem, I reach out to an audience equally at odds with official policy, and I celebrate our mutual humanness in an inhuman world.

I didn't write my poems because I wanted to, they were wrung from me. I had to write them.

Sometimes tradition is a way of keeping going.

Cherish your wilderness.

Here on the drawing board fingers and noses leak from the air brush maggots lie under if i should die before if i should die in the back room stacked up in smooth boxes like soapflakes or tunafish wait the undreamt of.

The tougher the form the easier it is for me to handle the poem, because the form gives permission to be very gut honest about feelings.

God serves the choosy. They know what to want.