I stayed five days and nights. Then I couldn’t get it up any more. Joanna drove me to the airport. She had bought me a new piece of luggage and some new clothing. I hated that Dallas-Fo...

I wait on life like a pregnancy, p… the gut but all I hear now is the piano slamming its teeth throu… brain

Times were still hard. Nobody was any more surprised than I when Mears– Starbuck phoned and asked me to report to work the next Monday. I had gone all around town putting in dozens of a...

they don’t make it the beautiful die in flame— suicide pills, rat poison, rope, w… ever... they rip their arms off,

I remember the Model-T. Sitting high, the running boards seemed friendly, and on cold days, in the mornings, and often at other times, my father had to fit the hand-crank into the front...

my father was a practical man. he had an idea. you see, my son, he said, I can pay for this house in my lif… then it’s mine.

I had to fly to Illinois to give a reading at the University. I hated readings, but they helped with the rent and maybe they helped sell books. They got me out of east Hollywood, they g...

I have been looking at the same lampshade for 5 years and it has gathered

absolutely sesamoid said the skeleton shoving his chalky foot upon my desk, and that was it,

Vallejo writing about loneliness while starving to death; Van Gogh’s ear rejected by a whore;

I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn’t particularly want money. I didn’t know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out,...

During the second and third grades I still didn’t get a chance to play baseball but I knew that somehow I was developing into a player. If I ever got a bat in my hands again I knew I wo...