clamp the c (c-clamp?) of clog on log, it’s a
dog: is, too: be beep: bittle de doo doo
daw: de daw daw: people always if, if, iffing,
if this, if that, my father used to say
with a cunning air “if the dog hadn’t
stopped to shit, he’d have cotched the rabbit”
my father when he was being winky-wise liked
to say cotched: (my memory is about as long as
your dick: that’s fairly short, hiccuped Henry)
no, since you ask, no, I don’t write to trim
my way into your approval, though I wish your
approval: and for your censure, it wavers on
the ridge of defining my good: though I don’t
care for your censure: still, some things one
doesn’t care for are useful, even illuminating
but if I don’t let you mess with me, you could
ask why I mess with you: after all, writing
is one thing: allurements to readers, possibly
misleading the worn-out or broke, carry
responsibilities: may you not pay me to do
whatever I please: do you not like to see the
field played, especially played well: (some
writers of traditional verse are better than
others, as are the writers of free verse: it’s
not the verse that counts but the difference):
(there really was nothing for me to amount to
except the nothing I am: I mean, by the
smallest amount, sir, by a hair, did I manage
to bring anything off: prospects at my
unfolding were as withered as an old folks’
skin collection: as I grew up things were
said of me by the elders from a
state of half amusement: I was not thought
likely, never likable: look you now who
stuffs bucks and smiles: I say, we are blind
to what we do will do: I say, responsible for
what we intend, what did we intend: help us
out there: do us a little good: I say to
people twisting in their minds, come on over
here to me, honey, I’ve been twisted fo-fi
times: I know the way to go easy on yourselves:
it was a dark road to find but I lit it up:
you are not the big cheese here: you didn’t
set this up: goodness turns out bad, meanness
saves: how are you supposed to know, when you
consider that millions of others are intervening
where the thread will frazzle: but then, of
course, as it were, press the c (as in
c-clamp) in clamp up against lamp and you
have damp: cool.