in some half-assed way i knew what i wanted to be when i grew up at age 16: a writer. didn't know what kind of writer, and i sure as shit knew i wasn't gonna be a famous writer, but a writer just the same.

it started with fiction, weird, surrealistic crap about monsters and aliens, and there was the erotica, which i've given up, the writing of i mean, not the reading of it.

then i had a severe breakdown when i was 19. spent a year of my life pretty helpless, hardly able to go outdoors even. in my slow recovery i discovered john berryman, and shortly after that rimbaud who was, and remains still, a great influence. and it was all down hill from there.

i became a reader, a poet second, a reader first. and even tho i read a bunch of trash, still, i take my reading seriously. and i realized early that reading/writing will not probably advance me a career in anything. what it will do, and does, is guide my living. one might ask a poet how his/her job and family influence the poems. i ask, in all seriousness, how poems influence yr job and family.

often on my walks to and from work lines i've been working on mix with lines from other poets' texts all to the beat of whatever song is looped on the soundtrack in my head. which in turn affects my walking patterns, my rhythm, how i view traffic and so on. i think there is nothing special in that. we all live within language, and yr words, how you say them, how you write them, become part of how you live and work in yr daily jobs of being a human fucking being.