Atlanta (cont'd)

We're off to see the wizard.
Brenda is getting packed.
I boxed up books and pamphlets, zines,
my 16-page newsprint self-cover flier,
Beat Poet 1, Raw Energy (1976), right on up
through Charles Bukowski, the gratis chapbook
John Martin published to give away to the friends
of Black Sparrow Press. Les amis de Debierue.
The artist's house off Range Line Road out west of
Lantana by the Faith Farm. Charles Willeford is dead.
I never got to meet him, in person. But I felt like
we knew each other. We went to Palm Beach Junior College
at the same time, both lived on Singer Island. The Shark-Infested Custard
is a favorite book of mine. "Strange Pussy" A favorite story.
I read A Guide for the Undehemorrhoided but not Grimhaven.
Cockfighter Journal: The Story of a Shooting but not the 30,000-word piece
on how Cockfighter would be based on Ulysses. He reviewed mysteries for
the Miami Herald and taught English composition at Miami-Dade, for years.
Oh, yea: Lummox Journal published an appreciation of him
I wrote called "7-Level Thinking." A retired U. S. Air Force
master sergeant. My highest rank held was airman first,
with over-four-years service.

If I were a publisher, I would bring out a book
called Cockfighter: Theme and Variations.
It would include the 30,000-word piece
Charles Willeford wrote to show how he would
base his book on The Odyssey, the novel, the screenplay
for the movie, the record of the principal photography
Willeford called Cockfighter Journal: The Story of a Shooting,
and an essay by the editor telling about how if the company
that brought out the novel had let him buy unsold copies at a discount,
he could have gotten well selling them through the mail, and out of
the back of his car, to enthusiasts who raise, trade, sell, and let fight
to the death their gallant fighting roosters. Also include a DVD of the movie.
I try to make my books read like that, only they're about small press writing, editing,
publishing, marketing, promotion, and distribution. Ha ha, where's sales?
It's no insuperable burden to pay the reader to read your work.
Henry Miller did it for decades, and so have I.
A how-to, a reason why, and a concrete example.
Call it BARNSTORMING FOR POETRY.
The word poetry a self-inflicted wound,
a stabbing yourself in the head,
like a scorpion.
Here, Julius--
hold this.

I called a series of books Yardbird Suite one time.
Underground is like that. Three books related thematically.
Or one book in three parts. A diary, a memoir, and a journal.
The memoir with some White Folks fiction in it.
Prose vignettes. Live on Parker Bayou
and write a roman-feuilleton. Bay Leaves.

When I was on sabbatical, I gave myself
a new web site, roman-feuilleton.com.
I left The Daily Bugle up, but stopped posting
to it. I wrote 24 books that year, a personal best.
I don't think it's a record that will ever be beaten.
Not that I'm competing with anyone. Don't brag.

What did I want to do with my life, starting out?
Write world literature from Parker, Florida.
Belong to the prestigious left-wing think-tank
the Point and Shoot Institute (PSI). Be a public
intellectual. With colored pictures of writers
like Stanley Crouch to remind myself of how
the world works. (1) It's a lonely trail,
if you haven't got a friend. And (2),
if you've got money or influence,
you'll have more friends
than a dog has fleas.

What can I say about the performance of
David Davis and the Warriot River Boys
at the Everett Brothers Music Barn
in Suwanee, Georgia?
It was good?
I liked it?
Owen gave a clinic
on bluegrass fiddle playing?
A master class?
As David Davis says,
"He's been on the road
for more years than
musicians twice his age."
Fred and Josh and Marty.
Guitar, banjo, upright bass.
Fiddle and mandolin.
The classic instrumentation.