Tope Hall

These Prose is spray-painted on the side of old beat-up Boxcars. Rolling through the rain on they way to Detroit, Chicago, Miami -- who the fuck knows?

Precisely at 7:01am EST the whole Universe entered the top of Lord Thrilling's skull and exited [out] through his left ankle. The strongest Buzz yet My Lordship had ever been administered.

He heave up and forward and dig his fingernails into the oaken arms of his tormentor. Some of the witnesses looked away, others cried, and some never forgot what they saw for the rest of their lives.

The doctor put the stethoscope up to Thrilling's rib cage and nodded to the Warden who lowered the shades. Slothy hand Lord Thrilling a fifth of Jack and tell him: "that was the best show yet!"

Correctional Officers quickly ushered them out the back door of the Death House where a long black limousine was waiting.

The next day all the northern Florida newspapers reported: '...in his final statement, the Condemned extinguished his Marlboro Red upon the arm of the Chair and proceeded to tell the Warden: "Sir, I am ready to get high."'

I write this for all the failed Poets in Ann Arbor. And surrounding countryside and environs of Detroit City. No comely lass can save me now. They as foreign to us as pubs we once frequented 30years ago. Perhaps a trifle of talent may have lifted this venture off the ground. What?

Lord Thrilling roll up a thousand beat up boxcars and rusty gondolas into a huge joint and smoke it down greedily--

"Damn, this is some good shit," saith His Lordship, with smoke pouring out of his ears; "Hope I don't wig out."

I have read and digested yore Coleridge. In these cheap motel rooms.

Turkey buzzards gathered over my Manuscript. The stench was overpowering. Only an ole voyageur like me could drink at such a time as this. I tried to reach the Great Spirit but he was holed up in his 800 room pile in the south of England -- Kent I think it was. Indisposed.

Lonely ole Funnel Cloud drop out of the sky north of Tecumseh and hit a cornfield running. It hum and buzz and dance a jig and throw-up rotten floorboards and cornstalks.

"What in tarnation!" saith Lord Thrilling, coming on as a freaky old farmer. Corncob pipe fall right out his mouth.

Yore Lordships will never dig my Prose till you get a proper set of headphones.

I saw the Rolling Stones once in the bowels of Reverb Stadium. They looked so small. A strange smell come up when Mick and KeeF walk by.

Slothy repair to the Pool Hall to squander the last ten dollars and seventy six cents of his pitiful inheritance. Behind the restrooms, out the backdoor, was the skyscrapers blinking -- 1 mile distant.

The Detroit Chess Scene was just peaking then. What with the advent of the Sicilian Najdorf. And Conrail. We were all writing. Passing ourselves off as Poets at every opportunity.

The strongest player [I ever seen] in the ward was Ezra Pound. He was cash money. Tactically, the best Poet to grace the cyan halls of Ypsilanti State Hospital since Lord Thrilling furst set down a chess set. In the Establishment. Back in 1978.

It's a fine day here. Orange cat on the patio. Lord Thrilling in the back garden peering through the black tulips.

Rabelais wrote for the Ladies. Could it be any other way? Why even now [toady] I write for my Lady Tawny Bonnie. They ain't an inch of Interstate from Bangor all the way out to Barstow she don't leave desolate.

The 20th Century was a motherfucker. Don't let nobody tell you [no] different. I see you up there. In yore graduate classes -- at some frozen midwestern university -- trying to work it all out. Well, let me give you an example, when I was matriculating at Ypsi State,

they was still employing the Electric Chair to great effect down in Starke. I tried to avert my head and stare down at the floor in a [most] profound manner. But it didn't help none.

Every word of this Screed is spray painted on the side of Boxcars. The whole god damn Manuscript is broke up and rolling across the Continent. North, South, East and West.

Now listen here. I began the Screed in Detroit. And that's where I'll end it. A single fiver. Beatnik Literature [everywhere]. Me, sitting up on a white plastic bucket. Thinking I was gonna be a 'writer.' I got file cabinets full of this rubbish. But it doesn't matter [none].

Everyone gets buried -- Plastic Mick, Plastic Keef -- even Plastic Julio Caesar. It's really too much to think about. Look how [even] Burger Chef crumble into the sea.

In the village of Detroit, I was nothing. Another crazy voyageur. Drunk. Singing my Poems under the Ambassador Bridge. Up in Ypsilanti, I matriculated most unsuccessfully. I was the laughing stock of the [hole] English Literature Department.

'I write not to be fed, but to be famous,' ain't that what yore Larry Sterne tell you, Dear Fixxx?

What a happy coincidence you and Slothy meeting like this right cheer in the middle of the Milky Way Galaxy. Imagine the odds. Slothy's boney hand move the pen right across the pager. And only think that every atom of calcium in it was fashioned in a star that exploded ions ago.

"That is truly more astonishing than anything in yore Bible or Koran, what?" saith Lord Thrilling.

It is impossible for me to find a Buzz [and there were many] that was not instructive. The only time we ever suffered, Dear Fixxx, was when we was stone-cold sober. And you know it. I set the WorLd Processor up not too far from I-94.

Three miles down the road was the trailer park where Iggy Pop grew up. Next to that was a [defunct] Howard Johnson's. I only mention it to yore Lordshipps as it wasn't t'other the evening, I was sitting up on the porch imbibing copious amounts of Ole English 800