That is not gonna make Oprah Winfrey happy.
–Chuck Palahniuk
Dont touch my Willie. You dont know him that well. Help yourself to some Luke Bryan or Ted Nugent or any of those clowns. I know what you heard but I dont walk party lines. So keep your mouth off my Willie. We’ll get along just fine.
–Troy Stone
We are all absolutely delirious with joy.
–Victoria Valentino
Time has taught me that it goes by. The quality and timbre of our moments aren’t as important as the fact that they’re going and gone. Life can be astounding, if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen…it’s true, but–at the end of the day it’s the end of the day and you’ll never get it back. There isn’t much reckoning I can come up with when I think back on the decades of abuse and waste of at least three-thousand nights getting blotto or anger-fucking and so strapped with depression and dread I was glad to end it and commit suicide if only incrementally. Those things’ll kill ya, they used to say. I’m counting on it, I would respond. It might’ve looked cool, hell it might’ve been cool but the truth is I was so scared of death that the only control I had was to rush toward it. Plus I was young and a poet so I had enough of that post-adolescent cocktail of ignorance, melodrama and Father-issues to be lethal, or at least justify smoking a pack of black Gauloises and drinking bourbon and stout every night, stopping by her house for uninvited rough sex and waking up hating life and ready to do it all over again. I think I thought I’d write on those days. Invariably I probably only stared at a screen as blank as my future, the dread and malaise would return and I’d head out to the bar or get takeout somewhere and nurse a 6 of Black&Tan big boys with a copy of Generation Of Swine. Or I’d smoke a bowl and take Ibuprofen and play a Gretsch archtop through a Fender ProJunior. I was suffering then and I am suffering now. The difference is back then I thought my suffering wasn’t enough. I’d have to go extra if I wanted to write like my heroes. More importantly, and far less disparaging and horrible, the difference is I start writing now. I still stare, putter, jerkoff, eat and, worst of all stalk social media. I still do everything else first, before I start writing, but I start.
That’s what this blog is all about, Yellow Lark Press and a book every year until 2025. My raison d’être post 40. Why I’m back in the states slinging bolognaise and humping crates full of silver into the back of a box truck after midnight. Ok, I do that for money and for the opportunity to generate an email list, start a Patreon campaign, apply for the Community Initiatives grant and attempt to cultivate a daily Yoga practice. I’m making up for lost time. It’s the only way I can pay any attrition for all those lost years. They taught me nothing but it wasn’t all for naught. Those lost years are my biggest inspiration today. Those lost years as a jerkoff alcoholic are really starting to pay off.
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#powerpeople
Going for the Throat 