My Christmas shopping is nearly complete, except for my brother Frank and sister Pammie, but accomplishing that should be easy thanks to a bet at OTB with Bill Yusk coming through. Wise Philip at Aqueduct. An unexpected boon thanks to a dream about the race. Like DH Lawrence’s The Unrealistic Dream Of A Horse Rider. A naked man with a cowboy har riding a bathtub gave me a name. Wise Philip. I had once dreamed him before and Bill and I had bet of Johnny D ridden by Stevie Cauthen. The naked man came through again. I told Bill to not talk about this to anyone.

“It might break the link.”

LATER

Alice called from West Virginia and said, “I want to travel.”

Her father had given her an Amex card for Christmas. She didn’t mention anything about her missed period. She hasn’t said anything about an abortion either. I’m thinking about being a father. She doesn’t really want to have a baby. She hasn’t said anything, but she wants to be an actress and there aren’t too many roles for pregnant women in the movies.

I want to travel too and not just to West Virginia, but Boston is the only possible destination for the foreseeable future. It’s been over four years since I hitchhiked to California, something I had done three times from 1972 to 1974. I’ve been stuck here on the East Coast for years. I doubt I’ll ever hit the road again.

Alice on the other hand could leave me in a heartbeat and I couldn’t blame her. Her absence was felt this week as I walked home from CBGBs along the dark street hurried by winter winds, searching the empty sidewalks for faces, finding none only the shadows of destroyed buildings. The ruins of the Lower East Side. AS much as I fear her fleeing to Paris or LA, I’m sure she will return. Where else can she go?
Anywhere.

A bullet struck Malcolm X
Snipers struck at JFK
A sniper killed Martin Luther King
Assassins surrounded RFK.

These men died before their time
Why did they die and I outlive them?
Boy Dylan also lived
Nixon survived his disgrace
Why did he live with so many others died
Thousands of American dead in Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese,
Million of Cambodians.
A curse on Kissinger

In 1960 my friend Chaney drowned in Sebago Lake

If he had lived
He might have died in Vietnam
AS I might have
If my mother signed my enlistment papers
At age 17.
I so wanted to leave home.
James McNeil, a hometown boy, died in ASia,
Struck my lightening.
The young die young.
Kissinger still lives
Nixon, Pol Pot, and the Shah
The Pope too
The Eternal Church.

My only choice.
Live a joyous life
With the evil far away
Worshipped by the people
Not as Gods, but as leaders,
Leading us the Armageddon
Where the evil and good will be burned in an atomic hell
Freeing Earth of Man
For anyone that remains the charred flesh of the living
The crumbling bones of the dead.
Paradise.

John Kemp and Grant Stitt are coming over. I haven’t told anyone about Alice’s lateness for her period. We were heading up the GG Barnums, a Times Square transvestite disco with a trapeze act appealing to the three or more genders of humans. I like a brunette there. Shannon. Skinny and looking like a Vogue model. Maybe I’ll see her there.