University Scribbles From The Basement Boxes

More from the 'basement boxes'.....a page from my 1st book (attempt), that was assembled from correspondence done during summer 'recesses' from college, wherein I usually had plenty of time to write, draw, paint and collage....before returning to University, to spend months in more academic pursuits........I never showed any of this largesse of words to Donald Davidson, Cleanth Brooks, Dr. Finney or Robert Penn Warren.....thinking they just weren't 'hip' enough for my post-Agrarian jumbles of words and pictures....cut, sliced, glued and pasted, bound...and, generally, tossed to the trash or burned as ritual sacrifices.....the 'blood of the poet' mindset........toss the paper blood to the burning embers of total frustration, don some strange costuming, and walk...alone....on the blackest nights.....to the all night eateries.....where, 'playing the artiste', i could write on napkins, wipe ketchup from my lips...as blood....then ignite the napkin with my grandfathers old Ronson.....watching it burn in the alley behind Nicholson's Record Shoppe which featured the music that I listened to as I stayed up, on caffeine, writing until that boring Latin translation class at 8:00 am...... Then, in the tomorrow, sit in animated conversational dialogues about Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus or Milton's intentions in Samson Agonistes.....as though Literature were as important as the whirling emotional vortexes of a 21-year old brain, obsessed with 'getting it all down'........and, there I was.....wasting 20 minutes....explaining why I refused to wear striped shirts or buttoned-down oxford cloth........