from: The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry

Title: Advice to a Young Writer

All piffle & twaddle-influence of Bottom Dog man.
For real "decadents" read Huysmans & other french authors.
Diarrhea of words-stew of classic allusions.
Fuck Artemis et alia!
Don't put intellect in your prick!
Write honestly even if poorly.
Humor is weak-immature.
Try drugs and compare two kinds of writing.
Try using only Anglo-Saxon words.
Throw your dictionary away!
Don't mix realism with poetics!
If you can't make words fuck, don't masturbate them!
When you speak of **** put hair on it!
Try to forget everything you learned in college.
Try talking like an ignoramus-or an Igaroti.
Read, for emetic, "Palm Wine Drinkard."
You will learn to write only when you stop trying to write.
A line without effort is worth a chapter of push and pull.
First ask yourself if you have anything to say.
Don't draw the pen unless you are ready for the kill!
If you don't get rid of the Classics you'll die of constipation.
Never show any one what you're written until a year or two later.
Use the axe to your 1st draft and not the fine comb.
The latter is for the lice!!!

Henry Miller

 

Ode to a Tijuana Toilet
(or the Famous Fuck You Prosaic Principle)

Portrait of Jim & naked ass
in the mirror (from backstage
it issaid: IT IS "MORBID!"
Is it MORIBUND it is asked,
Oh Great Crusty bowel of no end
SHOWING HIS BALLS TO THE WORLD
Is it Sebastian
yanking arrows out of his butt
Or the brave matador's shadow
the last moment in the/mirror
IS IT THE FATHER
who cries it is the "MORBID SON"
THE ANSWER ARRIVES:
Fuck dad, dear dad, fuck you.
The lonely man who can't
get out
from the back of the mirror
Great puppet of the Other
O breathing life
to the dead on the sand
Dried sea weed that speaks
singing Italian Songs
on Patchen Place
to the caged girl
The body in a tin can
empty of the soul
The crow is crowing
and two becomes one
THE END
The pen is set aside,
the moving finger wrote
and now he takes a shit.

James Dean
Written in early 1955

 

Henry Miller never could write and he was even a poor pornographer. I'll be damned if I'll ever take his advice!....