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88 I’m not sure I’ll be ever that good. At best I’m mostly reliable: from start to finish, a man of my typewritten word, tooling along behind the daisy-wheel of my well-oiled Olivetti, which has no memory to speak of—which is a blessing, given some of the things I’ve rolled out of there, looking impossibly good at 2 a.m. with no one else on the road. Write me down as someone whose outmoded, unprocessed way with words still makes a measurable impression, at least on paper—like Bigfoot writ small, but indisputably heading across that snowy expanse where anything’s possible again, bringing even high-minded zoologists to their knees: something you could point to and actually feel. This poem would get its primordial ink on your fingers right now if it could. It would love nothing more than to rub up against you and belong. Hey—I sweated ampersands just finally going electric, plugging in like Dylan at Newport, 1965, when he nearly blew the sensitive fuses of all those acoustic-folksong purists: I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more. And I pounded out my own amped-up anthems, but without the attendant booing. Without thinking for a moment I was seriously Dylan. Beyond the desk lamp’s suggestion of brilliance, Meanwhile, Back at the Typewriter, I’m Hoping for a Greater Acceptance Now that we’re actually taking your work, would you be so good as to send us copies on disk? —from more than one well-meaning editor’s reply 89 I couldn’t make out a single face where an audience should have been. There are lines, and then there are lines I will not cross. This typewriter never fails to beep its tiny horn, letting me know when I’m in danger of going too far. I might yet have enough memory to include my home-phone number: 961-388-something. And if anyone bothers calling to check up on me, I might put down the receiver right next to the clack-clackclacking of the keys—but only if the cord will stretch that far. Already I can hear voices on the other end: You were right, honey—or Smithers or Mr. President—he doesn’t have a portable phone! And once more I’ll be a small throwback wonder, painfully quaint, as if I’d gone and set up shop next door to the taciturn blacksmith in some colonial Williamsburg beyond the pale of human understanding. Here’s what I say: if I’m crazy, then please be good enough to think of me as crazy like a fox—the quick, brown beast of ancient typewriter legend, maybe a step or two slower after so many years, but still all instinct and optic nerve. The look in his eye is more hungry than playful when he’s jumping over the lazy dogs on his way to henhouse glory. He needs the exercise. He’s talking his typewritten way in again, his mouth still full of feathers from the last time he was this good, so good, almost too good to be true. And I’m not kidding this time, either. You can take it from me. ...

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