boink! Blurbs TOC Business Richard Martin BOINK Acknowledgements Some of these stories and poems have appeared in by Richard Martin the following publications. Thanks to editors of: a Lavender Ink Magazines: ACM, Bellingham Review, Café electronic edition. Review, Collages & Bricolages, Colorado North Review, Estuaires, Expressway, Fell Swoop, Lungfull, Copyright © 2005 by Richard Martin. MSS, Pulpsmith, and Yellow Silk. All rights reserved. Chapbooks: Backwoods Broadsides, and Napkin Apologies (Fell Swoop) Books: Modulations, Marks (Asylum Arts), White Man Appears on Southern California Beach (Bottom Fish Press), Quack (Lot M Press), Dream of Long Headdresses: Poems from a Thousand Hospitals (Signpost Press). Anthologies: American Poets Say Goodbye to the 20th Century, and Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café. 2 [ Table of Contents \ Acknowledgements 2 DAY EIGHT 76 Notes 82 DAY ONE 5 Appendix N 98 Notes 7 Appendix O 99 Appendix A 14 Appendix P 100 DAY TWO 15 DAY NINE 102 Notes 17 Appendix B 22 DAY TEN 103 Appendix C 25 Notes 106 Appendix D 27 DAY ELEVEN 111 DAY THREE 28 Notes 114 Notes 29 Appendix Q 119 Appendix E 35 DAY TWELVE 123 Appendix F 38 Note Free 126 DAY FOUR 39 DAY THIRTEEN 126 Notes 41 Appendix G 48 Notes 129 DAY FOURTEEN 130 DAY FIVE 50 Notes 137 DAY SIX 55 Appendix R 146 Notes 55 Appendix S 147 Appendix H 57 DAY FIFTEEN 148 Appendix I 58 Notes 149 DAY SEVEN 60 Appendix T 157 Notes 61 Appendix U 163 Appendix J 69 DAY SIXTEEN 167 Appendix K 71 Appendix L 72 Appendix M 75 3 DAY SEVENTEEN 168 DAY TWENTY-FOUR 253 Notes 172 Notes 257 Appendix V 177 Appendix DD 257 Appendix W 180 DAY TWENTY-FIVE 259 DAY EIGHTEEN 182 Notes 262 Notes 194 Graffiti Intermission 266 Notes 267 DAY NINETEEN 195 Notes 199 DAY TWENTY-SIX 268 Appendix X 203 DAY TWENTY 212 Notes 215 Appendix Free Day 218 DAY TWENTY-ONE 219 Notes 220 Appendix Y 222 Appendix Z 223 DAY TWENTY-TWO 224 Notes 226 Appendix AA 231 Appendix BB 242 DAY TWENTY-THREE 243 Notes 246 Appendix CC 250 Notes 251 4 Day One order and is only minorly intended to foreshadow how out of sequence my account of my life will appear in memoir form. The opening line of this memoir which starts: Let me state from the start that I have never “The opening line of this memoir” does not read anyone’s memoir and don’t tote high contain the main idea of the memoir and/or my expectations around in my head that many people reason for writing it. In fact, the opening line - the will read this one. Basically, what I know about one just read if you happen to be reading this - has memoirs comes from reading side and bottom page no meaning, seems pretty flat for the start of a advertisements about them in publications like the memoir, and is generally useless to me because I New York Times Book Review section. Over the have in mind a great opening line that I really years, I’ve noticed a lot of celebrities write intended to use, but have not used because I felt I memoirs. The advertisements for these memoirs needed to wait until I turned fifty years old to use usually indicate that they’ve had (the celebrities, it. I won’t be fifty for a couple of more weeks, but that is) and that they reveal (the celebrities, that is) my urge to write and begin the memoir started rough and abusive childhoods as well as assorted today. addictions to overcome, and that they (the Today’s date: February 26, 1999. celebrities, that is) have shown great courage in The urge to write my memoir came over me weaving these experiences into the tales about the after I shoveled my walk, read Richard Brautigan’s great movies and glorious awards they have made Trout Fishing In America, drank a glass of orange (the celebrities, that is) along the way. And there juice, heated my sore back with a heating pad, told are other memoirs depicted in these side and my wife about a strange “poetry-like video” dream bottom page advertisements by famous generals I had during the night, checked and double- etc., who have bombed the hell out of various checked to see that the schools were closed, third-world countries and recount in their stopped by Hercules Press to pick up some free fabulous-stark-raving-mad memoirs the full details copying my friend Mike, who owns the place, did of their various bombing campaigns, juxtaposed for me, paid my bills and mailed them out at the with their own woesome childhoods and Post Office by lucking-out on a space for my car in addictions to those who missed the daily reports of front of the P.O.(which involved shifting my car these bombings on the evening news. into neutral, turning on the caution lights, and It amazes me sometimes that I can pick-up stuff walking briskly into the post office lobby to send like this from advertisements I barely glance at. So, my bills down the throat of the stamped mail only there is something more to it than that. I must slot). Of course, this sequence of events is out of 5 confess that the corner-of-my-eye is fully functional wry comments about American life, my life, your as I saunter through the corporate bookstores of life, and life in general, as I work through the self- America looking for something to read. It’s imposed limits I’ve placed on this memoir in terms obvious to me that an awful lot of high-profile of time. people on TV use these bookstores and the Here’s the deal: in order to celebrate turning corporate publishers to extend and push their life- fifty years old and dumping this memoir off my stories. chest (buried treasure, real treasure?) before the Luckily, I don’t consider myself a hypocrite or start of the next millennium (understanding fully even a cynic for thinking my life-story could feel that my small stash of readers will be well into the comfy in one of these bookstores next to a starlet’s new millennium before my memoir gets into their sighs or a general’s ramblings. True, I’m just a very hands, and that they will have experienced the full low-profile individual. But I have a story to tell and monty of Y2K or understood it to be a hoax etc.), why the hell not tell it. Give it up for Joe I will capture the essence (or existence, if you Average...The Common Guy...The Guy on the believe existence precedes essence) of my life up Street...At the bar...In the Laundromat... Etc., Etc. until this point in writing in 50 days, with a single This one’s for you. Besides and/or in spite of my day of actually writing the memoir corresponding obscure status, I’m a life-story (form) of high to one year (non-sequential) in the package of fifty intention and will (let’s say money-back guarantee) years I’ve lived. This is not to say I will write about charm my lot of readers with my method of each year. Like, here I am as I was when I was disclosing my life. three, and the family remains perplexed about my Here’s what I promise to produce, reveal, and penchant for running into things - walls, floors, recycle: chunks of a novel destined for the ashcan toilet seats - with my head, and the memoir (in the novel, I am a character called Fist, who documents all that as year three. No, what I mean wanders aimlessly (after outrageous religious here is that I won’t take more than 50 writing days indoctrination in early childhood) in the social and to present the fifty years of my life to you. personal upheavals dominating his experience of There are a few reasons for imposing such a the second half of the 20th Century), new tales in limit. One: Who will want to read any memoir (let stand-up and/or radio disguise about my life with alone this one) whose domain is the events of the doctors (including a poem never before published last fifty years of Century XX from the scenic vistas called Background Radiation), an occasional flash of the next millennium? Sure, there will be some fiction (under two pages in length to sell, reinforce, who will say: “Yeah, I’d be willing to read another or make a point about said upheavals), and assorted goddamn memoir situated in Century XX, as long 6 as the bastard who wrote it was still in the 20th Notes when it was written. If not, count me out, baby, ‘cause it’s time to be moving on.” Two: My own 1. memoir. All kinds of reversals happen in life. investment in my life story warrants no more than There are big spiritual notions of reversal such as 50 days. It’s not that I don’t value my life and find the first shall be last and the last shall be first. I it as unique and interesting as anyone else’s - still know that Dylan (See Note 106) references this there’s a limit to what I can say or want to share. Sermon on the Mount message in one of his songs. Plus, if I go on too much (I write in long hand), I’ll And though I can’t recall the poem, I remember never type something that took me longer than 50 one by Jerome Rothenberg (See Note 21) that days to write.