Ezra Lipschitz was born in 1955, then mostly raised as a Catholic with a Jewish last name in Colma, California–a necropolis for the city of San Francisco. An early-life concoction that he claims was a short road to eventually becoming an atheist. He completed a degree in English at UC Davis, but doesn’t recall getting his diploma. He travels extensively as a folk musician and storyteller. And drinker. When he stays in one place for any amount of time, it is usually in his cabin in the woods at the foot of the Rockies in Southwestern Colorado, near the border of New Mexico.

I Shouldn’t Say… is his first book. A book he didn’t necessarily want to put out. However, Nathan Brown, owner of Mezcalita Press, after reading much of the material asked his permission to do it for him, because the timing of the pieces about Donald Trump were simply too important.

The book is divided into four chapters. The first is The Home I Never Quite Had. The second is Adam’s Broken Rib, a section dealing with the wiles and difficulties of human relationship between the sexes. The third is Holy Days, that covers the fall season of 2016 that ushered in the presidency of Donald Trump. The final chapter is called The Fourth Horseman. It is a point-blank look at the insanity of a narcissistic megalomaniac becoming the leader of the free world.

Lipschitz also has a daughter that he did not meet until she was eighteen. Another unusual aspect of his life that he is shockingly honest about.

The fact that he is a prolific poet goes hand in hand with his cantankerous and contentious soul. And, when Brown approached him about letting him do this book, Lipschitz initially said no. However, he later later agreed, saying, Well… as long as I don’t have to edit the damn things. And no readings. He would do no readings. Poetry readings are insufferable marathons of the waning spirit and dying soul as far as he is concerned. So, don’t bother asking again.

Brown, however, insists that the world will be better off with these terribly raw and honest poems in it.