Dear Norman Schwarzkopf: Letter from 10-year-old Kyle

I found a letter I had written to General Schwarzkopf as an assignment for my fifth-grade English class. My grandmother sent it to me a few years ago. Apparently, I felt I could colloquially address the general.

Little me was self-conscious about being small for his grade, but other than that, was an egotist who talked about himself for the majority of the letter, even squeezing in how others say "I can run fast and they say I'm strong".

Transcribed with original typos:

Dear, Norman

I've been thinking about you down there in Saudi and I been tring to remember to pray for you every night, I thank you for being down thier. I don't know a whole lot about you so when or if you right me back please tell me something more about you than what I've already heard on the news. I'll tell you about me for a little while than I gotta go eat at a resaraunt. I'm ten years old and my birthday is on November, 20. I have three brothers and one sister. My favorite sport is football my favorite team is LA. Raiders [emphasized with square lettering] and thier ausome but thats my opion. My favorite player is Bo Jackson [emphasized with large lettering] a wear glasses but they broke. Just because I wear glasses does not make me a nerd because people say I can run fast and they say I'm strong. And its not just my dad who says that its my mom to just kidding. Oh and I'm in 5th [emphasized with large lettering] grade. I skipped a grade thats why I'm so small and people call me midget if thats how you spell it. My name is at the bottom of course. Well gotta go see you later I hope.

P.S. please when you write back send me a suvanier well by.

Your friend

Kyle Erickson

Old Married Men (animated)

Leslie cut some audio of this poem from the the fun Kick Assonance reading, and I drew some sketches to accompany it. Enjoy.

Circle of Life

Click image to enlarge.

Do you mind?

"Can you do me a favor and stop rubbing that early 90s Pop all over my body."

10.

Oh, how pleasure flames
permanent flying gestures
across your temples

New York, You Beautiful Bitch

Letter to a friend who asked, "What is New York?"

Sir,

When I first moved to NYC, the most cosmopolitan aspect of her reminded me of Valencia, Spain, the only big city, 4 million people, I've lived in, though I've passed through many. A philosopher from Baltimore made an overnight round-trip just to see Steven and my poetry reading in Brooklyn. He was confident he could navigate the madness, and in spite of his being a world traveler, he failed. I had to give him directions while 50 kind people awaited our reading.

"New York, madame, is a monument to a city," said a wise poet.

Here's a fat nutshell of my exploits, failures, and euphorias upon my Manhattan embrace.

Leslie and I both gained over 40 pounds after our honeymoon with NYC. We lived in a shoe box, 275 sqr foot studio, and worked opposite schedules. Our option to pursue our dreams with few excuses made us depressed and overwhelmed.

I'm stalling. Here's the raw reel.

I scrawled my dreams and nightmares on the toilet, on the train, in my mind in the shower, over barren souls, always, through everything, while working in the Moloch monoliths of Manhattan: 13th largest law firm in the world, D___ and _____, where my nose bled and I cried over malnourishment while proofing mergers and acquisitions of the ____, _____, and the late Michael Jackson's business exploits; the Daily News building houses the globe of the Daily Planet in the first Superman movie with Reeves, here I wailed through 20-hour shifts, editing medical material, going temporarily blind for reading reading reading; Les was in a robbery; I almost fought a clown who hit her; the move from Manhattan to Brooklyn was tougher than Tulsa to Manhattana . . . all the while, writing writing writing poetry, sketches, Transit Prosody, Walking Stiff Blues, songs, prayers, elegies, and reading Jung, Rilke, Nietzsche, the Gospels, Dostoevsky, Eliot, Joyce, Pound, WCW, Isaiah, Doty, Li-Young Lee, Goethe, Kant, Alan Bloom, Aristotle, and comic books.

Saw angels in the architecture, devils in the subway, duende in the heart, and felt the muse in my blood.

Leslie kept me sane, and I her; Midwest dreams and the North Woods of Central Park helped, too.

Courtesy of Craig Ruttle.

Miles Davis, Ravel, Dvorak, Radiohead . . . on the phono, the latter in concert, helped too.

The city heals me and kills me, and Christ and Leslie sustain me.

I've printed 4 lit journals, produced countless plays/performances, have a draft of 3 novels, made music events, made music, hung an artists' collective. One must go to the valley first, to the depths of the river of the valley, before one can enjoy ascending. I will slip and fall, but I'm enjoying the burdened climb to heaven.

If Christ is for us . . . devil help those against us. I feel like Paul, telling of his beatings, imprisonings, shipwrecks, and time on the rack.

All to His glory.

Say hi to the ____ crew. Love them.

Love,
Kyle

200th Post

My 200th. For this I'll eat a Frisbee . . . again.

Ruddy Chins

There's a duo eclipsing the horizon that may blaze skulls dry with good vibes, though they're likely to fortify the touring tradition the Liverpool mops began in '65, i.e., not touring.

Either way, look out for original Ruddies blowing up your iPods soon.

Creativity

"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things."
Isaiah

"Chaos, the war of opposites, is, as we know from the Bible, the condition of creativity, which must be mastered by the creator."
Bloom

"One must have chaos within to birth a dancing star."
Nietzche

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
Whitman

"A dissonance
in the valence of Uranium
led to the discovery

Dissonance
(if you are interested)
leads to discovery"
WCW

"For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business."
 Eliot

"Dichten = condensare."
Pound

Jove Julia

Les and I returned from Chicago where we had our portraits drawn by our 7-year-old niece, Julia. After seeing her dark Russian interpretation of my profile (see the Raskolnikov rings under my eyes?), I glanced at her signature and began to explain that Jove was the Roman god of love*, until I realized that her spelling was just a beautiful mistake.

Les got a caterpillar next to the correct spelling of Jule's sign off.

Sketches are courtesy of Julia. All Rights Reserved.

*Jove or Jupiter is the god of the sky. Julia's confused typo, caused by staring at my daringly handsome face, indirectly led me to confuse her even more . . . ah, love.