I brushed into Ted Bundy, another night, at another Tallahassee bar. We didn't know it, that night, we young and innocent students, in pursuit of the buzz, I mean an education, but ole Ted was financing himself, by stealing purses, that night, from sorority girls. He killed four of them, soon after. I knew one of them, Margaret Bowman. In fact, I was one of the last people to see her alive. I spent the night with her and her date at a wine and cheese party that lasted until just hours before Bundy beat her to death. My door was the second one knocked on in the investigation, the next morning, outside of the sorority house, because I was the second to last person to see Margaret alive, besides her sorority sisters.

God, Tallahassee sucked after that asshole killed those girls. EVERYBODY was scared. I had a male friend sleeping on my floor for weeks.

I also lived in Los Angeles for a year, 1981, and I'll try to keep that part short. I took a shower with Arnold Schwarzenegger and I took a shot at Sylvester Stallone at a gun club that I worked at in Beverly Hills. I did not know that Black Flag, The Germs, Fear and X were raging in that city while I lived there. I was still into Van Halen, dude, at that time.


DB. Sounds like  a "colorful" past. You wrote me that you drank your way out of college and into jail and mental institutions. Could you tell me how those experiences have affected your writing?

Mikel K: Getting drunk was fun for quite awhile. Young ladies and I who would never have even spoken to each other regularly, woke up on my water bed, both of us naked (and hung over.) Of course, neither one of us knew who the other one was, nor what we had or hadn't done the night before. Looking back on it, I can't see how I regarded that as fun. One night stands: yuck. Thank God, we weren't fucking with acquired immune deficiency syndrome back when I was a young, drunk and full of cum lad.

My Dad fucked my writing "career," in the beginning, or rather I fucked it because I listened to my Dad. I told him that I was going to study writing at college, and he said, "One in a million make it at that game; I don't think you have it." Well, thanks Dad. (The Mick Jagger lyric, "Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind. Ain't life unkind..." comes to mind; the mind that I eventually lost.)

So...instead I majored in Business and sorority girls, and got very, very drunk every night of the week, instead of then pursuing what would later be my passion: the word. I staggered out of F.S.U. one class short of a Business degree, that I didn't really want, so mentally confused that I couldn't pass the fucking finance class that that was standing between me and the piece of paper that supposedly was going to play such a great part in making my future happy and secure.

I was so fucked up in that era, that I've almost forgotten that I move to Orlando, Florida for about a year, after wandering away from Tallahassee, drunk, depressed, lonely; a loser. In Orlando, I spent way too much of my time on the Orange Blossom Trail, drunk, harassing the ladies of the night. My drinking was taking me from being a frat boy, in the honors program, at F.S.U., dating the homecoming queen, for a bit, to what a conservative Christian might view as the dark side. I know that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson wouldn't have approved of the way that I was living. They would have called me a sinner, and all I would have had to do to quit sinning was to send them some money. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Lord.

I drank pretty much every night from 1975 until 1989. If anything, drinking got in the way of my writing, though I did carry pens and a notebook with me into the bars and scribbled away until I was too drunk to scribble away anymore. Ru Paul gave me my first hit of LSD in Atlanta, in 1982, and adding that to the already alcoholic mix sent me very un-merrily, quite a few times, inside the God-forsaken puke green walls of state mental institutions, right at the time that everybody's all American hero, Ronald Reagan, and his scumbag chum, Bush Sr. were cutting back on money for that and every other social program in our great free nation.

One day, I was in the living room of an apartment that I was living in, banging out great works of literature on the typewriter, and something came over me, which caused me to reach out and touch the curtain with my lit cigarette lighter. I was still smoking cigarettes and pot, then, and I sat there in my writer chair and watched, with a weird and detached fascination, as flames grew larger and larger in front of me consuming more and more of the curtain.

Thank God, my girlfriend was home, and she and the upstairs neighbor put the fire out. My girl was then left to figure out what to do with me. She was told to take me to the loony bin, as I was totally non-communicative. The booze and drugs had really caught up with me. (Was this a bottom; no.) I wound up on the worst level at the mental hospital, colliding with other zombies, people who had jumped off bridges and shot themselves in the head, the failed suicide ward, I call it. Those gathered would mill about the room, bumping into each other and saying, "Hey, got a cigarette?"

It was hell, or more aptly, one step away from hell. LSD did not turn out to open any great doors of perception for me; in fact, it shut down quite a few. Booze had me by the balls by the time I was twenty and did not let go of my testicles until I was 34 and decided to seek help, knowing that it was either that, or death, and my son had just been born and I really wanted to stick around and be part of that. Much of this is documented in The Delivery Guy. I began writing The Delivery Guy as I began my battle to get and stay sober, so the two are firmly enmeshed in the book. So yes, my drinking has affected my writing, on one hand by shutting it down, and two by giving me wild crazed near death experiences to share with the reader, and sober, happy, normal events that rock when you recover from such a sick, sad, and scary world.

DB. You said that after you sobered up you went back to school to finish an English degree with a minor in journalism. Still you pride yourself in never holding a real full time job. What was your motivation to get the degree if you didn't want to work as a writer?

Mikel K: I have always worked; I have, also, never been interested in turning my life over to anybody for a paycheck, no matter how much they were paying. I'm here to write, I'm not here to mix paint, sell encyclopedias or term life insurance door to door. I don't want to be, and never did want to be, a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant. I don't want to sell cars, new or used. Money is great and I love having it, but I won't do anything to get it. I'm a writer, and write I do, and write I will, whether I sell one book or a million books. I started throwing newspapers at peoples' front doors when I was eleven. I shoveled snow as a kid, raked the leaves of everybody who would pay me, and cut their lawns for a buck as a kid. I was a much more money hungry human as a kid than I might be now. I spent a lot of time in the restaurant business, where nobody really noticed if you didn't work there long or if you had a major drinking problem.

My motivation to get a degree was that I had not gotten one the first time out, due to my drinking, so, when I sobered up, it was kind of a matter of personal vindication to go back and get it. It was also a matter of personal vindication for me to get the degree that I wanted, which was one in writing, in this case an English degree with a Journalism minor, and not the Business degree that my Dad and corporate amerika thought that I should get.

By saying that I didn't want to "work as a writer," I meant that I wasn't going to go knocking on doors at newspapers trying to get them to hire me. Thompson talks about the "ultimate freelancer," well, that is what I am. I write all the time, but I don't do it because someone is telling me to, I'm doing it because I want to. I hate to keep quoting Thompson, but I think it was him that said that, "anytime you have to do something, it sucks," and you lose the freedom in it.

DB. You have freelanced as a journalist though, right? Tell me some of the publications you're worked for and what you've written for them.

Mikel K: I wrote a weekly music column for a paper called, "Footnotes," and a story I did for that paper lead to a gig as a freelancer with The Atlanta Journal Constitution. This is way ancient history, like about two decades old, now. The only thing that I think is significant about it, to my way of thinking, is that I wrote for those two top-level papers without a degree in Journalism or English.

I was a regular in a thing called "Lowlife Magazine," for a bit, and I found that fun and interesting. The guy who put it out seemed to hate me, yet he kept printing my poems and writing about me. Like Hunter Thompson said, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." I've turned pro at many stages of my life, in many different situations, and I'm really just glad to be alive. I'm being too fucking long-winded, as it is...God I hate when people get long winded in interviews.

DB. No, go on,  really, I wouldn’t have you stifle yourself!

Mikel K: I do need to mention Subtle Tea, though. David Herrle has been putting me in his great publication fairly regularly. Check out Subtle Tea at www.subtletea.com.

At Footnotes, I covered the great, great Atlanta music scene. I had a weekly column, wherein I tried to cover as many bands, drop as many names as I could, make as many people as I possibly could feel good about themselves and their music. I went to live shows. I went into music studios. I stood by the monitors with drink after drink in my hand trying to figure out what the lead singers were saying. I got to know the doormen and the bartenders as well as I got to know the bands, so that I could get into the clubs to cover the bands and not have to pay for drinks when I got there. The problem was, I still had that drinking problem from back in Tallahassee that I told you about and about now it was starting to black out and pick fights.

DB. You mention that you have worked nearly a decade as a pizza delivery guy
so that you wouldn't have to put up with people's crap the way waiters do. Have you been able to turn those unpleasant interludes into characters in your writing? Don't you still take a lot of crap as a delivery guy?

Mikel K: I quit taking crap when I reached 6' 2" and weighed 286. Most people at their front door are polite to a guy with those credentials. Oh there were dick heads, and I document them in The Delivery Guy. One who comes to mind is the special lady who said to me, "Gosh, what is the world coming to when the delivery guy knows more about politics than the customer?!" What a cunt. In the old days, I would have blacked out on some booze, and come back and slit all four of her beamer's tires. It was an election night, I was making polite small talk. Fuck off and die you bitch. There, that is the feel of The Delivery Guy. The Delivery Guy is a nice person, polite, well-mannered, but he looks at the world around him and sees a lot evil, a lot of disrespect, a lot of mother fuckers with no balls, no principles, and no respect; and they are the ones that everybody seems to fucking worship. Guys like Donald Trump are assholes; I mean come on. My kids are supposed to look up to guys like that. I'm sticking my fingers down my throat now. Puuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuke!!

DB. I've told you that you seem to post more work on My Space than any other poet I know, and we spoke about hypergraphy, the compelling need to write everything down. Do you think that might truly describe you?

Mikel K: I looked it up, and yes I am guilty, just as you pointed out so were Sylvia Plath and Edgar Allan Poe, among others. I'm in good hands, when I'm not in the hands of Allstate. Here I've found it, exactly what you said:

"Have you ever heard of a condition called Hypergraphia? I've heard of it before, but was just reading about it again in the June issue of Psychology Today. Some people just have to write, all the time, about anything, on anything, and I was wondering if you thought that might describe yourself? Now, please, take no offense. This is not considered a "disease" or a condition that needs correcting.It's just a condition observed in some people, including some very famous people. Edgar Allan Poe for instance. And Sylvia Plath. Dostoevsky. Issac Asimov."

DB. Do you stop and jot things down as you're working, or throughout the day when you're not working? Ever written anything on the lid of a pizza box?

Mikel K: My "job" is to always have two pens, a sharpie and a notebook with me at all times. Sometimes the best thoughts come far from the laptop. I am still a much better on the run writer than I am at sitting down, facing the computer screen and saying, "o.k. time to write 20 poems. My Space actually helps me be more productive, because I know that people are reading what I write, so it is sort of like having my own private column with mostly cool people reading it. I never wrote anything on a pizza box, but a number of women tore their top off, I mean tore the pizza box top off, and wrote their phone number down, begging me to come back later and have a leftover slice with them. And you thought beautiful women were only interested in Doctors and Lawyers!! (It's all in The Delivery Guy.)

DB. Ever had an accident trying to write and drive at the same time?

Mikel K:  No. Writing while driving, is like using a cell phone while driving, it is dangerous and stupid.  I did drive drunk for almost two decades, but that is another story; and I've only written while driving a very few times and in very safe place like going 85mph down I-85.

DB. I wonder if you could tell us what factors drove you to your self
destructive drinking when you were younger?

Mikel K:  My father, my government, the nuns and priests at the Catholic school that I went to through fifth grade. Everybody but me is responsible for the lousy things about me, and I am solely responsible for all the good things, and there is a lot of it, about myself. Just read The Delivery Guy to learn about it.

DB. You've been sober a long time now. Fifteen years. Are the factors still there for you? Are you still tempted?

Mikel K:  I'd rather buy a .44 and put it to my head than pick up another drink, because suicide is where I would be headed anyway, so why go through all the fucking pain that I would go through to get there? I'm spiritually fit, so I'm cool on the booze scene, wherever I go. When I first quit, I couldn't walk down the beer and wine aisle at the grocery store. I had to run from it. I couldn't go into the bars where the bands were playing, and I had been, for years, a music writer. I remember throwing a bottle of vodka and a twelve pack of beer into a friend's back yard from his refrigerator because I was living with him and it was such a fucking temptation, such an evil fucking monster was this staring me in the face. Fortunately, this guy cared about me and knew what I was going through, so he just smiled when he saw his booze scattered throughout his backyard. Props to Kevin Ball, y' all!!

DB. A lot of famous writers, like Hemingway or Hunter S Thompson, had a rep for being heavy drinkers or substance abusers. What would you tell a young writer that thinks he needs to live that way in order to write creatively?

Mikel K:  I would tell a young writer that he or she is full of shit if they think that substance abuse will lead to anywhere else than a shotgun blast to the head or a handgun shot to the face. I see these guys all the time, trying to be Hunter Thompson Juniors, bragging about how much they drank or how many drugs they took or take. The level that a Jim Morrison, or a Hunter Thompson or a Hemingway, or a Mikel K or a Hank Williams drank at, is not pleasant and is not a prerequisite to anything but fucking insanity and eventual death because of it.

DB. Your two new books, the novel and the poetry collection, are both published by you and printed at LuLu. Did you want to self publish, or did you try to go through traditional publishing first?

Mikel K:  I tried cold-calling first. I sent 52 query letters out to agents about The Delivery Guy. Recently, supposedly, the book sat on a desk at The William Morris Agency in NYC. Either they thought it sucked, or more likely it got lost beneath empty pizza boxes, of all things. I like the Lulu thing. I would like to get an agent for the book and do the other thing. The main thing, though, is to keep writing, and I believe that whatever is supposed to happen will happen. I believe in fate and I believe that I, as a writer, and this book are going to wind up where we are supposed to be. If you like The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll, you will love my book. If you like The Catcher in the Rye; if you like Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas, you will like The Delivery Guy. Whatever book you like or dislike, you will like my book. I mean like Ru Paul used to say, in the early days, "If you love me, baby, give it to me...!!!"

DB. Besides My Space, how do you promote your book? Have you done any readings, book signings? Do you work with any independent book sellers?

Mikel K:  I'm waiting for the world to come to me while I feed my turtles Prynce and Rue Paul, my dogs Javi and Morisson, and my cats, Kobain and Jagger. I have faith that through the internet someone will come forward and say, wow, yes Mikel, we realize how good you are and we realize how good your book, The Delivery Guy is, and we want you on Bob Marley Outside the Dakota." No home should be without this book, either, really. I'm not trying to sell you some swampland in Florida here, kids.

DB. You told me that your children's love is the most important thing to you. Do you feel that you are living a pretty integrated life? Are you able to have your kids, your writing and a way to earn a living without much internal conflict?

Mikel K:  My son just turned 18. He doesn't need me hovering on his every move. It's a new era for me; I'm having to reinvent myself. The kids' grandmother said that, "God sent Cynthia to be in your life, now that Graem is getting on." I think that she is right. When the kids were younger, I really didn't have the time or interest to devote to a love relationship; the kids were my first love. The other boy is 25. He is doing great. Check out his art at www.myspace.com/chapter13.

My daughter, or daughter figure, or as she calls me, my step-daughter,(I hate the word step) is 13. She is the most fun now, because she still has to hang out with me!! I just took her and one of her friends to see Fallout Boy, and we're going to see The Acadamy Is... next month. These are great adventures that I would not get to go on with her not in my life.

I've written a book called, "I'm the Male Anne Lammott." It is about growing up with the kids,  as a single dad, trying to write, as well as provide for their needs and wants. I wasn't alone through all this. We had this weird little extended family, that you wouldn't believe. Shout outs here, again to Kevin Ball, and one to the photographer G2.

You find ways to do the things that are important to you; the things that make your heart light up in flames, and my kids and my writing have always set my heart on fire and moved my soul.

DB. What are your plans for the future? What do you see yourself doing say, when your children are grown and out of school?

Mikel K:  Writing. Writing. Writing. Loving the lady(Cynthia.) Traveling. Traveling. Traveling. Lending or giving money to the kids; and the grandkids; har har!!

DB. Why should someone read your book, The Delivery Guy, i.e. buy it?

Mikel K:  Because it is unlike any book that you have ever read. If you read a lot, you will love it. If you never read, you won't be able to put this book down. You can pick the book up and turn to any page and what you start to read will make sense to you; the book will pull you in. Whether you are a fast or slow reader, my book is a quick read. It was written in a manic-frenzy. Anyone who is angry, disillusioned, pissed, broke or working a shit job should read read The Delivery Guy.

If you're drinking too much, if drugs are not working anymore, then you should read The Delivery Guy. If you think that the government sucks, then you should read The Delivery Guy. The Delivery Guy is a memoir, but it is also the Catcher in the Rye of now. I am Holden Caufield, but I have a happy ending. I'm a sucker for happy endings. I really think that shit lives can be turned around. I really think that if you are so depressed that you are thinking about killing yourself, that you can turn it around and live a happy life. The Delivery Guy did, so why not you?

DB. Is there anything else you'd like to tell the readers?

I'd like to leave them with a couple of poems from my book, "They Shot Bob Marley Outside The Dakota."

Freedom Was A Whore

Freedom was a whore.
I abused her.
I misused her.
I confused her with
something else.
I neglected her.
I bet that she would
be there for me forever.

Freedom just walked away.
----------------------------------------------

They Shot Bob Marley Outside The Dakota

They shot Bob Marley outside The Dakota the day that John Lennon rose from the dead.

Jimi Hendrix sat at the head of the table while Jim Morrison read the prayer.

When they finished the final supper, Janis Joplin began to sing. Kurt Cobain started to cry, while he walked on water. Charles Bukowski looked up from a game of poker that he was playing with angels, lit his cigar and smiled.

----------------------------------------------

We Are The Children...

We are the children of the sun
and the stars…

We are the children of the hippies
who were strung out on peace and love
and heroin when they conceived us.

We are the children of alcoholics
conceived in blackouts.

We are the children of the punk rockers
screwed into this world on beer and anger.

We are the children of the poor
raised on welfare and food stamps
and government housing.

We are the children of the middle class,
borrowing from the government, to get
an education to get a job with a pension
from corporate amerika who has already
fired our fathers before they could retire.

We are the children of the rich,
who like our fathers and mothers
before us, care only about obtaining
more wealth.

We are the children of the doctors, dentists
and lawyers who care more about their porsches
and their mercedez than they do their patients.

We are the children of the Amerikan dream
roaming the streets with a blanket
and a garbage bag full of aluminum cans.

We are the children who now have the children
and we hope they won’t learn racism from us
like we learned it from our moms and dads.

We are the children who can change the inevitable,alter our destiny, change the future from futile to fruitful.

Amen.
--------------------------------------------------------


To buy The Delivery Guy and/or They Shot Bob Marley Outside The Dakota, go to http://www.lulu.com/mikelkpoet

Mikel K doesn’t pretend to be a guru or a scholar, but profundity and reason often kick from his poems whether he likes it or not.  He delivers priceless lines rather than overwrought pieces; he’ll burp and say, “I’m an alien on this planet and I want to scream, damn it,” rather than wax Steinian about a rose being a rose being a rose.  In this modern era of snubbing domesticity, Mikel boasts about home life, parenthood, and reformation from intoxicated adventure.  His work can climb from scatological to ultra-sensitive: “Love can make it. Smile at a stranger. Be nice because.”   A smile can erase the grizzly mood; post-relationship idealization is bypassed for the sincere query: “Does she miss fucking me?”

Above all, even if you don’t dig Bukowski or Rollins derivation or you pale at Hunter S.-type “fuck it”-ness, Mikel K writes his unique heart on his sleeve.  Perhaps his approach to poesy is similar to a “guitar genius” apartment neighbor from one of his book’s journal entries: "I don't want to play like Jimi [Hendrix], but I want to play like Jimi did, always looking for something new.”  Hey.  He’s Mikel K.  He’s Mikel K…because.

Last update : 01-08-2007 04:49

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