have I gone the way of the deathly death?
will this machine finish me
where booze and women and poverty
have not?

hell is a closed door when you're starving for your goddamned art but sometimes you feel at least like having a peek through the keyhole. young or old, good or bad, I don't think anything dies as slow and as hard as a writer.

stricken and numbed alone in the temperate zone of dumb agony

I knew that I was dying. something in me said, go ahead, die, sleep, become as them, accept. then something else in me said, no save the tiniest bit. it needn't be much, just a spark. a spark can set a whole forest on fire. just a spark. save it.

no baby, if you're going to create you're going to create whether you work 16 hours a day in a coal mine or you're going to create in a small room with 3 children while you're on welfare you're going to create with part of your mind and your body blown away you're going to create blind crippled, demented, you're going to create with a cat crawling up your back while the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment, flood and fire.

you wonder where the real ones are

self-congratulatory nonsense as the famous gather to applaud their seeming greatness