GINSBERG MADE ME DO IT

Here's how it happens:  words start unrolling between your ears, and maybe you could stop them if you wanted, but you're too damn curious not to find out what they're going to be, and how they're going to end, so you grab your notebook and pen, and start taking dictation.  Anyway, that's how it happens for me.

Bob Dylan said writing the fifty-four verses in the first draft of Like a Rolling Stone was like vomiting.

Henry Miller said he couldn't shut the words off, so he wrote them down.  I think that was Sexus, Nexus, and Plexus - three volumes, thousands of pages, god knows how many words.

Phil Ochs said he couldn't get the words to come. He killed himself.

I started the morning reading "The Lion," by Allen Ginsberg.  This is what it led to, and except for crossing out a few words it's un-edited:

SPONTANEOUS MAUDLIN GINSBERG

One of these mornings you're going to wake up cold with not enough covers to roll you back to sleep

One of these mornings you're going to wake up tired with never enough sleep never enough sleep

One of these mornings you're going to wake up hungry and old Mother Hubbard will be blowing on a thigh bone trumpet

One of these mornings you're going to wake up lonesome with no one around but the stubbled reflection of the self you need glasses to see

One of these mornings you're going to wake up with a stomach as big as a baby elephant - you've got a lot of nerve, Ganesha

One of these mornings you're going to wake up bleeding from every hole

One of these mornings you're going to wake up with stars in your eyes and concrete in your head

One of these mornings you're going to wake up spouting gibberish your dog actually understands

One of these mornings you're going to wake up to a bowl of cold cherries wet and slick, and a glass of cold water, and you're going to enjoy the fuck out of them

One of these mornings you're going to wake up dead, and won't that be the last available straw…

Get outta here, Allen, I'm up, already.