FRESH TROOPS

This chapbook falls into two parts. The first consists of nine recent pieces as yet unpublished. The second part consists of the opening section of an early unpublished work, the second volume of my prison narrative, Rags of Time: A Season In Prison (Beacon Press, 1972), written now 35 years ago. I humor myself by thinking of these pieces as fresh troops to send against the Surge, the Bush administration, and the latest war for oil. Fresh troops undeployed until now. I have a great need to throw these lines of words against that war. For I am old now, sick, and, in the fifth year of the Iraqi War, not of sound mind, being uncommonly depressed with stark feelings of impotence. (Perhaps I’m just channeling Democrats). Everything I’ve been able to write and publish these last forty-five years, despite black listing and bad jacketing, has been at root anti-war and it’s all to do again.