Free Long Hard Road Out of Hell by Neil Strauss, Marilyn Manson

now
    escalates, constructing a wall
    around my bed, trying to shut
    everything out
    but without a doubt
    the cryer casually climbs what
    I thought was a Great Wall
    not unlike the one in Berlin.
    He begins to speak.
    His words flow cryptically from
    the hole in his head
    like funeral music: deep, resonant,
    and sorrowful.
    He says to me: “You must
    surrender to your dreams it’s just.
    We sit all day planning for your attendance
    and upon arrival you
    very impolitely
    ignore us.”
    In awe, I nod involuntarily
    and he closes my eyes.
    No.
    He gives me a pair of aphrodisiac sunglasses,
    and I fall asleep in the shade.
    Asleep in a field of hyacinth and jade.
    When I crawl out of my sleep
    I get up,
    my hair a tangled mess of golden locks.
    I enter the kitchen,
    and go to the icebox.
    I pull out a single can of beer,
    and as I begin to drink
    I hear
    The weeping of an abandoned infant.

June 5, 1988             
    Brian Warner            
    3450 Banks Rd. #207
    Margate, FL 33063    
    John Glazer, Editor
    Night Terrors Magazine
    1007 Union Street
    Schenectady, NY 12308
    Dear John Glazer,
    I received my first copy of Night Terrors in the mail two weeks ago, and have now read the entire issue. I enjoyed it, particularly the story by Clive Barker. I haven’t heard from you, and wonder whether you received the poems that were included with my subscription request. I am more eager now than before to be published in Night Terrors Magazine . I feel that it is the perfect place for my work. Please respond soon and let me know if you received my last submission, or if you’d like me to send it again.
    Sincerely,                  
    Brian Warner             
----
    July 8, 1988                 
    Night Terrors Magazine
    1007 Union Street         
    Schenectady, NY 12308
    Brian Warner
    3450 Banks Rd. #207
    Margate, FL 33063
    Hey Brian,
    Nice to hear from you. Thanks for the nice words about NT ; yes, I read your poems, and enjoyed them, but did not think they were right for NT . I’m sorry; I must’ve forgotten to respond to them. But please submit again soon; I’m really enjoying your work.
    Till then,                      
    John Glazer                  
    Editor                          

i wasn’t born with enough middle fingers
    C ’MON BABIES GREASE YOUR LIPS P UT ON YOUR HATS AND SWING YOUR HIPS D ON’T FORGET TO BRING YOUR WHIPS W E’RE GOIN’ TO THE F REAKER’S B ALL .
    –Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, “Freaker’s Ball”
    W HEN you have friends, you form a band. When you’re lonely, you write. So that’s how I spent my first months in Fort Lauderdale. As my father worked at Levitz Furniture, supposedly a big opportunity for him, I sat alone at home and brought my most twisted fantasies to life in poems, stories and novellas. I sent them everywhere from Penthouse to The Horror Show to The American Atheist . Every morning I rushed to the door as soon as I heard the mailman. But all he carried in his bag was disappointment: either nothing or a rejection letter. Only one story, “Moon on the Water,” about an alcoholic writer with a cat named Jimi Hendrix and a well that swallows everyone he loves, was ever published—in a small journal called The Writer’s Block .
    Disappointment followed me like a ball and chain that first year in Florida. The more work I did, the less it paid off. I was leading a pathetic life: living with my parents and attending Broward Community College, where I studied journalism and theater because it was all that interested me. For extra money, I became the night manager of a local Spec’s, a record chain where I soon found an opportunity to revert to the type of behavior that had gotten me into trouble in Christian school.
    There were two cute girls who worked at the store. The one that liked me, of course, was heavily medicated and obsessed with