Seattle

I'd call the Medusa Lounge a cellar.
I don't mean that as an insult,
necessarily. If a cellar's where the readers are,
then that is where the artist goes. Marketing 101.
First, you have to know who the town creep is
in the adjoining town, if that's who reads you.
Then you have to network. I hate that word.
It sounds like lesbians, or a wicca coven.
On the other hand, Monk cut a record
the studio called Underground, and then

he made the cover of Time magazine.
It's a perennial schtick, a persona. Outlaw.
Zorita was an uncredited nightclub owner
in the movie Lennie. Sans snake.

The back cover of Bukowski Never Did This
says Jack Saunders went ten rounds with Mr. Bukowski
"sans paparazzo." That is, with no tits and no veteran's preference.
No allowance from a publisher to quit his job and stay at home and write
Post Office. He wrote Post Office while still working at the post office,
his co-workers and supervisors grinding his guts to glass. Bukowski didn't do that.

Either I had equipment difficulties,
my delivery was flawed, or my material
lacked snap. But the laugh lines drew no response.
Maybe it was audience fatigue, after a full evening of poetry
and short fiction readings. A contest between a student and
The Masked Professor. Maybe I was too hip, baby, or not hip
enough. The obverse of a Terry Southern story I read
in Evergreen Review circa 1957-1960. Lenny Bruce was "working to
the band," instead of to the people who go to striptease shows.

V. Vale and RE/Search:
I bought a copy of Real Conversations
at Philly Zine Fest 2005 from AK Distribution.
I enjoyed it very much. Here is Bukowski Never Did This,
in which I talk to myself. Sincerely yours, Jack Saunders.
Have you had it in an olive, the oral polio vaccine?
No, I had it on a sugar cube. But I didn't get
simian immunovirus (SIV).

I remember when I was 17
my parents drove me to
Miami International Airport
to fly to San Antonio, Texas,
to go to basic training. It was
a big deal. Men worse suits,
or Class A uniforms. Women wore
high-heels and hose. The hoi polloi,
or little people, were awed by their betters.
I was a little person. A soldier in the transition to
a permanent post-war military-industrial-academic complex
I would later go to university for. Then graduate school.
Ha ha, in the College of Hard Knocks an expulsion
is often a promotion, Scott Nearing says. The only way
to win is failure. Billy Childish said that.

Q: How did Zine Fest go?

A: Okay. I met some people, bought some books. Sold some books.

Lots of free handouts.

I did a workshop and got a T-shirt.

Q: 100% cotton?

A: Yes, but an XL.

Too small.

I look like a blivet in it.

Q: How did your workshop go?

A: Okay.

Q: No drinking in the Rotunda.

A: I had three bottles of beer in my backpack.

I poured them discreetly in my large paper coffee cup.

Q: What did you do with the empties?

A: I left them on the floor, underneath the table.

Q: Three beers won't get you drunk.

A: No.

My flight was delayed in Philadelphia.
I missed the connection in Atlanta.
Slept in plastic chairs. Listened to shitty music.
In Atlanta, I was paged. Call home. My mother died.
She stopped breathing, and then her heart stopped beating.
It was peaceful. I felt like I had denied my brother and sisters
the chance to say goodbye to her, so I could be, or play,
the bigshot. But maybe that's the way that someone wanted it.
My mother, say. No one knows except The Shadow, and he's not talking.