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I’m creating a self-portrait. I never realized this before. I am creating the man I want to be in words. I am cataloguing all of my stories and all of my thought for the world. That is what a poet does. That’s my job. To be me and accurately report on it.
Sorry, I’m having a moment here. I’m in the middle of an epiphany—just like James Joyce—except I get to be stoned while I’m feeling in it.
Finnegans Wake is gibberish! It just felt good to write that. Sorry it was so abrupt.I’m going to get back to the responsibilities of being Tom Hardie.
I should call Dawn.
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Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than
before known,
Arouse! for you must justify me.
I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.
I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you.
The idea of getting a, you know, syringe full of heroin and shooting it in the vein under my cock right now seems like almost a productive act.