Sure The World Breeds Monsters, But Kindness

Be Willing To Be A Child And Be The Lilliputian In The World Of Gulliver.

In My Godless Household, Poems Were The Closest We Came To Sacred Speech -- The Only Prayers Said.

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.

It Strikes Me That Whatever Advantages There Are To Being A Boy--getting To Stay Out Late And Having Other People Wash Your Clothes And Bring You Plates Of Stuff--get Undercut By Having To Play Football.