I NEED TO WRITE IN THE DARK i need to howl my blues in the blackness i need to reach out and touch the ghosts who are the ghosts the ghosts are billy the kid and marie laveau the gunfighter and the voodoo queen i need to talk with the ghosts i need to dance with the ghosts billy the kid as blues poet marie laveau as the voodoo snake woman let me talk let me dance let me go deeper into the darkness i close my eyes in order to see i want to let the blackness be a new light i want to see most clearly in my blindness that is writing in the dark there is a stage in which i sing my blues but my larger stage is the blackness of the room in which i use the pen as a gun and shoot bullet words i am mutant i am outlaw and i talk with the ghosts i am mad i admit that but it is in my madness that i see most clearly the purest outlaw act is that of mad love but how can i explain that which can only be grasped in a phrase a syllable a fleeting feeling maybe an old blues from the radio in the wee hours of the morning or the voice from a telephone an outlaw voice a renegade voice a desperado feeling out of the blackness of the empty room with only a lone voice on the other end outlaw outlaw outlaw must cut through go beyond get it out outlaw is a drug and i am addicted i have found a new mathematics in which the numbers are soaked in blood i stay hungry and without sleep to write out my vengeance and when i sleep it is a bullet sleep i lie in bed and dance like a ghost in the wind i just want to answer coyote’s call with my own wolf nature a low down blues i can contemplate one photo for months for years a flash of light in the dark dark room a spirit shoot i save my trigger finger for my pen i am mad now and can only write in the dark when i cannot see no mountain can contain me no canyon can contain me only the darkness freeing me from the prison of my own mind in the middle of the lightning in the middle of the thunder is where i reside where there are shivers and eruptions and flashes of light like the sliver of light that slides under the door of a dark dark bar that you catch out of the corner of your eye i am the one who writes in the dark who writes out of the blindness to whom the blackness is a new light i am mutant i am outlaw i am the kid from new mex with a dance of hunger an insomniac who dreams in a bullet sleep
the outlaw is the one who is best when his back is against the wall is that garrett in the shadows i have gone insane and dissolved in the mirror the wolf has entered me and is howling i am mad now i have surrendered to the ghosts and i don’t care and to get to the other side of darkness is to surrender to your many faces i don’t even feel like i’m real anymore the ghosts talking to me i’m emptied out like a gun without bullets emptied out of even words as if the breath is gone the outlaw is the one who is best when his back is against the wall when all is hopeless when he has reached the end of the line then he comes alive for he is a brother to the blackness the outlaw makes himself out of nothing and the farther down he gets the greater the chance for improvisation for ghost language for the invention of himself out of the zero of the void so that his nothingness becomes outlaw and his outlaw becomes a ghost
the outlaw writes in the dark as if he’ll never get out of the night alive there is something dangerous in the air and he is scouting out the night the flesh of the image the skin of the rhythm the bones of the archetypes scarred wounded layered in the darkness i’ve seen the other side of your face so drunk on the blackness so drunk on the madness you invade me like an animal even with my eyes closed and i’ll never get out of this night alive stay hungry and lost in the motion stay famished and lost in the action stay starved and lost in the dance revealing to yourself your multiple identities stalking hunting scouting i come to you searching looking for something a word a syllable a voice a tongue a face a moment a feeling maybe the shiver of a sound maybe an old-time blues that is always new to look for your many faces to search out your many faces the mirror has gone crazy the blackness has invaded me and i’ll never get out of this night alive.