I woke up, wrote some.
I wake up with the voices
roaring in my head. Bukowski says,
about interviews, he thinks the books will sell
without them. Or they won't. He didn't write them
for money anyway. He wrote them to stay out of the madhouse.
I drive to The Red Bar to hear Dread Clampitt play.
Brenda stayed at home, to catch up on her civilian life.
I stopped at Sun Dog Books and Records, to buy Tim O'Brien's CD,
Cornbread Nation. I'd call my diatribe Generation of Losers.
That is, only people like e-man@secondbest.org, who know they're losers,
win. The ones who think they're winning lose. They have upsized their life to the point
where their possessions own them. Their SUV, their house in the suburbs. The job
they have to work at to pay for a bill of rights, a bill of wrongs, a bill of goods.

READFEST 2006 is like Walden.
My account of an experiment in living.
I tried to simplify my life, to get shed of things
I did not need. (Things are in the saddle,
and ride mankind.) Hopefully, things like glory.
The adulation of a pack of fools, who buy Oprah's Book Club
books, watch crime dramas and situation comedies on teevee,
et cetera, et cetera. Ceteris parabus means other things being equal.
That's where the first seeds of fanaticism are sown, Brother Dave says.
Would you recommend filter-tip Picayune? Why, yes. I would.

It isn't easy to crack
the Cow Whip of Doom
in a gimcrack culture.
But it's necessary. Someone
has to do it. The poster boy
for marketplace censorship is suspect.
He sounds like a sore loser who couldn't hack it.
An also-ran. A wanna-be. E-man, spilling his seed
on the married crossing guard's belly,
to boost his low self-esteem.

It was raining when I went to The Red Bar,
so I wore a felt-lined nylon windbreaker
with the Lucent Technologies logo on it.
I remember when I bought it. I was proud to be
a part of Bell Labs Innovations. A senior
information development specialist.
This was not a job title I made up
for myself, like hospitality industry report writer
and folk art critic, ecotourism czar of Walton County,
adventure travel correspondent for outdoor magazines,
or senior fellow at the prestigious left-wing think-tank
the Point and Shoot Institute (PSI). Fill the culture's head
with so much parody news and disinformation it explodes,
like Mr. Creosote when he ate the afterdinner mint.
The sol gel process for making fiber-optic cable was
an innovation. We used to make fun of the Japs for
reverse-engineering our ideas. We used to make fun of Pravda
for parroting the party line. Have you watched television lately?
Has your job been outsourced to an Indian?

Walden was self-published.
The Oprah's Book Club
of Thoreau's day weighed him
in the balance and found him
wanting in sex appeal. His message
was not upbeat. He was a nay-sayer.
He said if he repented of anything
it was his good behavior. He said
his neighbors lived lives of quiet desperation.
Send his book to the same place we sent
Charles Darwin's Origin of Species and teach
Intelligent Design. While you're at it, get rid
of Tom Paine's Common Sense. The sun
revolves around the earth. Any fool can see that.
Abstract art is a Communist plot. So is atonal music.
Vernacular writing. A slave is an ambassador in bonds,
who speaks boldly, as one ought to speak.
To his master. Vernacular translates of native-born slaves.

I bought a $15 scamp fillet at Goatfeathers Seafood, since 1988,
on Highway 30A. I sautéed garlic, onions, bell pepper, celery,
and mushrooms, browned flour, added diced tomatoes, made a roux. I cooked
fresh angel-hair pasta. I made a green salad. Brenda cooked pumpkin and eggplant.
Last night we had sautéed cabbage and bratwurst with creole mustard and Duke's
homemade pepper-vinegar (geaux juice). It was fittin' to eat, Wayne.

That's a joke. Wayne would eat
the ass out of a goat. He'd make a soup
out of Bukowski's socks.