Be Willing To Be A Child And

I Don't Think I Look Like The Pope's Favorite Catholic - At Least Not Under Close Scrutiny.

No Road Offers More Mystery Than That First One You Mount From The Town You Were Born To, The First Time You Mount It Of Your Own Volition, On A Trip Funded By Your Own Coffee Tin Of Wrinkled Up Dollars - Bills You've Saved And Scrounged For, Worked The All-night Switchboard For, Missed The Rolling Stones For, Sold Fragrant Pot With Smashed Flowers Going Brown Inside Twist-tie Plastic Baggies For. In Fact, To Disembark From Your Origins, You've Done Everything You Can Think To Scrounge Money Save Selling Your Spanking Young Pussy.

I'd Spent Way More Years Worrying About How To Look Like A Poet -- Buying Black Clothes, Smearing On Scarlet Lipstick, Languidly Draping Myself Over Thrift-store Furniture -- Than I Had Learning How To Assemble Words In Some Discernible Order.

Those Are Only Rumors Of Suffering. Real Suffering Has A Face And A Smell. It Lasts In The Most Intense Form No Matter What You Drape Over It. And It Knows Your Name.

As A Memoirist, I Strive For Veracity.