Last Words

Enemy have two notable weaknesses:

1. No sense of humor. They simply don’t get it.

2. They totally lack understanding of magic, and being totally oriented toward control, what they don’t understand is a menace, to be destroyed by any means—consequently they tip their hand. They don’t seem to care anymore—but famous last words: “We’ve got it made.”

Deadly by the logic of fiction.

Just can’t let them villains off scot-free?

Why Scot? Why not Swats, or Cot, Pot, Rot, Sot, slut, spot, shot, trot free—

Any case, they tend to overplay a hand. Ninety-nine percent bilious weasels.

It’s slappable—and who is here now?—best I can—got it back.

You never really have it till you lose it, Fritz. Till you lose it and then get it back. Few make it back from that track, Jack.

“As to what life may be worth when the honor is gone ….”

(French Naval officer in Lord Jim. One of the great characters of fiction.)

And look at the others by Conrad: Councillor Mikulin from Under Western Eyes, the Nigger “Wait” from Nigger of the Narcissus. All touched with [the] hand of creation.

Many others of course, maybe just a walk-on.

Brion Gysin hated Denton Welch. Didn’t see that it is just the petulant queerness in which he is straitjacketed—“Little Punky”—that makes his works such a great escape act.

Yes, for all of us in the Shakespeare Squadron, writing is just that: not an escape from reality, but an attempt to change reality, so [the] writer can escape the limits of reality.

The unworthies in power feel danger, like cows uneasily pawing the ground with a great “Moo.”

The song of the quick

that is heard by the ears of the dead

the widows of Langley are loud in their wail

and the idols are broken in the temples of Yale

for the might of the Board

unsmote by the sword

has melted like snow

in the glance of the bored

Ho hum—

to look death in the eye,

with no posturing lie,

just one on one …

who lives will see.

Is Death an organism?

Way down in Tierra del Fuego—a lot of Eukodol ampules.

This horror of drugs, orchestrated by Hearst and his “yellow peril,” then Anslinger—Harrison Narcotics Act—criminals by Act of Congress. You can’t compare alcohol, cigarettes to narcotics. Why not? Because alcohol and tobacco are legal, that’s why. What nonsense is here.

What they really can’t understand is division, possession—or perhaps they understand all too well, and do not want [it] examined.

Tell any feminist I shot Joan in a state of possession, and she will scream:

“Nonsense! No such thing. HE did it.”

Opera of the Angler Fish that absorbs the male till nothing is left of him but his testicles, balls, nuts, sticking out of her body.

All of me

why not take

all of me

so we become

one big WE

how great to be

one great fat me

Excuse me:

include me out.

December 5, 1996. Thursday

Now imagine a woman dancing out rug rat?

Well, it was like he was dancing [it] out in terrible agony, something in his spine, and the smell of rotten crabs, sweet gagging stench of excrement—and death.

After the shot he collapsed on the bed and lay there inert, but something was stirring in his spine from neck to the tail—and now pieces tore loose in the eggs and then a red, glistening head emerges in reeking yellow slime—and then the whole centipede, crawling out quick.

I got out my Detective Special. Then, moving with hideous speed and purpose, it scuttled through [the] ballroom screen.