Mercy

other side. There are sides. If he spills m y blood, it’s art. if I put

mine on him, it’s deeply not nice or good or, as they say,

interesting; it’s not interesting. There’s a certain— shall we

understate? — distaste. It’s bad manners but not rude in an

artistically valid sense. It’s just not being the right kind o f girl.

It’s deranged but not in the Rimbaud sense. It’s just not being

M arjorie Morningstar, which is the height to which you may

aspire, failed artist but eventually fine homemaker. It’s loony,

yes, it’s got some hate in it somewhere, but it ain’t revolutionary like Sade who spilled blood with style; perhaps they think a girl can’t have style but since a girl can’t really have

anything else I think I can pull it off; me and the other bait;

there’s many styles o f allure around. Huey N ew to n ’s m y

friend and I send ten percent o f any money I have to the Black

Panthers instead o f paying taxes because they’re still bombing

the fucking Vietnamese, if you can believe it. He sends me

poems and letters o f encouragement. I write him letters o f

encouragement. I’m afraid to show him any o f m y pages I

wrote because perhaps he’s not entirely cognizant o f the

problems, esthetic and political, I face. I look for signs in the

press for if he’s decent to women but there’s not too much to

see; except you have to feel some distrust. He’s leading the

revolution right now and I think the bait’s got to have a place

in it. I am saying to him that women too got to be whole; and

old people cared for; and children educated and fed; and

women not raped; I say, not raped; I say it to him, not raped.

H e’s saying the same thing back to me in his letters, except for

the women part. He is very Mao in his poem style, because it

helps him to say what he knows and gives him authority, I can

see that, it makes his simple language look strong and

purposeful, not as if he’s not too educated. It’s brilliant for that

whereas I am more lost; I can’t cover up that I don’t have

words. I can’t tell if raped is a word he knows or not; if he

thinks I am stupid to use it or not; if he thinks it exists or not;

because we are polite and formal and encouraging to each

other and he doesn’t say. I am working m y part out. He is

taking care o f the big, overall picture, the big needs, the great

thrust forward. I am in a fine fit o f rebellion and melancholy

and I think there’s a lot that’s possible so I am in a passion o f

revolutionary fire with a new esthetic boiling in me, except for

m y terrible times. The new esthetic started out in ignorance

and ignominy, in sadness, in forgetting; it pushed past

sadness into an overt rebellion— tear this down, tear this

apart— and it went on to create: it said, w e’ll learn to write

without words and i f it happened we will find a w ay to say so

and i f it happened to us it happened. For instance, i f it

happened to me it happened; but I don’t have enough

confidence for that, really, because maybe I’m wrong, or

maybe it’s not true, or how do you say it, but if it happened to

us, to us, you know, the ones o f us that’s the bait, then it

happened. It happened. And i f it happened, it happened. We

w ill say so. We will find a w ay to say so. We will take the

blood that was spilled and smear it in public w ays so it’s art and

politics and science; the fisherman w o n ’t like the book so

w hat’s new; he’ll say it ain’t art or he’ll say it’s bullshit; but

here’s the startling part; the bait’s got a secret system o f

communication, not because it’s hidden but because the

fisherman’s fucking stupid; so arrogant; so sure o f forever and

a day; so sure he don’t listen and he don’t look and he says it

ain’t anything and he thinks that means it ain’t anything

whereas what it means is that we finally can invent: a new

alphabet first, big letters, proud, new letters from which will

come new words for old things, real things, and the bait says

what they are and what they mean, and then we get new

novels in which the goal is to tell the truth: deep truth. So

make it all up, the whole new thing, to be able to say w hat’s

there; because they are keeping it hidden now. Y o u ’re not

supposed to write something down that happened; yo u ’re

supposed to invent. W e’ll write down what happened and

invent the personhood o f who it happened to; w e’ll make a

language for her so we can tell a story for her in which she will

see what happened and know for sure it happened and it

mattered; and the boys will have to confront a new esthetic

that tells them to go suck eggs. I am for this idea; energized by

it. It’s clear that if you need the fisherman to read the book—

his critical appreciation as it were— this new art ain’t for you. If

he’s got what he did to you written on him or close enough to

him, rude enough near him, is he different, will he know? I say

he’ll have to know; it’s the brilliance o f the medium— he’s it,

the vehicle o f political and cultural transcendence as it were.

It’s a new, forthright communication— they took the words

but they left your arm, your hand, so far at least; it could

change, but for now; he’s the living canvas; he can refuse to

understand but he cannot avoid know ing; it’s your blood, he

spilled it, yo u ’ve used it: on him. It’s a simplicity Artaud

failed, frankly, to achieve. W e’ll make it new; epater the

fuckers. Then he can be human or not; he’s got a choice, which

is more than he ever gave; he can put on the uniform, honest,

literal Nazi, or not. The clue is to see what you don’t have as

the starting place and you look at it straight and you say what

does it give me, not what does it take; you say what do I have

and what don’t I have and am I making certain presumptions

about what I need that are in fact their presumptions, so much

garbage in my way, and if I got rid o f the garbage what then

would I see and could I use it and how; and when. I got hope. I

got faith. I see it falling. I see it ending. I see it bent over and

hitting the ground. And, what’s even better is that because the

fisherman ain’t going to listen as if his life depended on it we

got a system o f secret communication so foolproof no

scoundrel could imagine it, so perfect, so pure; the less we are,

the more we have; the less we matter, the more chance we get;

the less they care, the more freedom is ours; the less, the more,

you see, is the basic principle, it’s like psychological jujitsu

except applied to politics through a shocking esthetic; you use

their fucking ignorance against them; ignorance is a synonym

in such a situation for arrogance and arrogance is tonnage and

in jujitsu you use your opponent’s weight against him and you

do it if yo u ’re weak or poor too, because it’s all you have; and if

someone doesn’t know you’re human they’re a Goddamn fool

and they got a load o f ignorance to tip them over with. Y ou

ain’t got literature but you got a chance; a chance; you

understand— a chance; you got a chance because the bait’s

going to get it, and there’s going to be a lot o f w riggling things

jum ping o ff G o d ’s stick. I live in this real fine, sturdy tenement

building made out o f old stone. They used to have immigrants

sleeping in the hallways for a few pennies a night so all the

toilets are out there in the halls. They had them stacked at

night; men sleeping on top o f each other and women selling it

or not having a choice; tenement prostitution they call it in

books, how the men piled in the halls to sleep but the women

had to keep putting out for money for food. They did it

standing up. N o w you walk through the hall hoping there’s

no motherfucker with a knife waiting for you, especially in the

toilets, and if you have to pee, you are scared, and i f you have

to shit, it is fully frightening. I go with a knife in m y hand

always and I sleep with a knife under m y pillow, always. I

have not had a shit not carrying a knife since I came here. I got

a bank account. I am doing typing for stupid people. I don’t

like to make margins but they want margins. I think it’s better

i f each line’s different, if it flows like a poem, if it’s uneven and

surprising and esthetically nice. But they want it like it’s for

soldiers or zombies, everything lined up, left and right, with

hyphens breaking words open in just the right places, which I

don’t know where they are. I type, I steal but less now, really

as little as possible though I will go to waitress hell for stealing

tips, I know that, I will be a prisoner in a circle o f hell and they

will put the faces o f all the waitresses around me and all their

shabby, hard lives that I made worse, but stealing tips is easy

and I am good at it as I have been since childhood and when I

have any m oney in m y pocket I do truly leave great chunks o f

it and when I am older and rich I will be profligate and if I ever

go broke in m y old days it will be from making it up to every

waitress alive in the world then, but this generation’s getting

fucked unavoidably. Someday I will write a great book with

the lines m oving like waves in the sea, flowing as much as I

want them. I’m Andrea is what I will find a deep w ay to

express in honor o f m y mama who thought it up; a visionary,

though the vision couldn’t withstand what the man did to me

early; or later, the man, in the political sense. I make little

amounts o f m oney and I put them in the bank and each day I

go to the bank for five dollars, except sometimes I go for two

days on seven dollars. I wait in line and the tellers are very

disturbed that I have come for m y money. It’s a long walk to

the bank, it’s far aw ay because there aren’t any banks in the

neighborhood where I live, and it’s a good check on me

because it keeps me from getting money for frivolous things; I

have to make a decision and execute it. When an emergency

occurs, I am in some trouble; but if I have five dollars in my

pocket I feel I can master most situations. M y astrology said

that M ercury was doing some shit and Saturn and things

would break and fall apart and I went to unlock the two locks

on m y door to my apartment and the first lock just crumbled,

little metal pieces fell as if it was spiders giving birth, all the

little ones falling out o f it, it just seemed pulverized into grains

and it just was crushed to sand, the whole cylinder o f the lock

just collapsed almost into molecules; and the second lock just

kept turning around and around but absolutely nothing locked

or unlocked and then there was this sound o f something falling

and it had fallen through the door to the other side, it just fell

out o f the door. It was night, and even putting the chain on

didn’t help. I sat with m y knife and stared at it all night to keep

anyone from breaking in. The crisis o f getting new locks made

me destitute and desperate and on such occasions I had to steal.

I always considered it more honorable to m yself than fucking;

less honorable to who I did it to; it was new to pick me over

them. I just knew I’d live longer stealing than fucking. O f

course I stole from the weak; who doesn’t? I had thought

fucking for money was stealing from the strong but it only

robbed me, although I can’t say o f what, because there’s more

wordlessness there, more what’s never been said; I’m not

formulated enough to get at it. I had a dog someone dumped

on me saying they were going to have it killed. It was so fine;

you can weave affirmation back, there can be a sudden miracle

o f happiness; m y dog was a smiling, happy creature; I thought

o f her as the quintessential all-Amerikan, someone w holly

extroverted with no haunted insides, just this cheerful, big,

brilliant creature filled with licks and bounces; and I loved

what made her happy, a stick, a stone, I mean, things I could

actually provide. I think making her happy was m y happiest

time on earth. She was big, she bounced, she was brown and

black, she was a German shepherd, and she didn’t have any

meanness in her, just play, just jum p, just this jo y . She didn’t

have a streak o f savagery. If there was a cockroach in the

apartment, a small one because we didn’t have the monsters,

she’d stand up over it and she’d study it awhile and then she’d

pick it up in her mouth and she’d carry it to her corner o f the

room and she’d put it down and sit on top o f it. She’d be proud

and she’d sit with her head held high while the awful little

thing would crawl out from under her and get lost in some

crack in the wall. Y ou ever seen a proud dog? They have this

look o f pride that could break your heart like they done

something for you the equivalent o f getting you out from

under an avalanche and they are asking nothing in return, just

that you look at the aquiline dignity o f their snouts. I got to say

I loved her more than m y heart could bear and w e’d go on

walks and to the park but the park near me was full o f broken

glass and winos and junkies and I was afraid for her, that she’d

hurt her feet. Y o u couldn’t really let her run or anything. She

ate a lot, and I didn’t, but I felt she had certain rights, because

she depended on me or someone, she had to; so I felt I had to

feed her and I felt I had to have enough m oney and I felt her life

was in m y hands and I felt her life was important and I felt she

was the nicest, most kind creature I ever knew. She’d sit with

me and watch the door when the locks fell apart but she didn’t

grasp it and I couldn’t count on her sense o f danger, because it

w asn’t attuned to the realities o f a w om an’s life. Someone

might be afraid o f her or not. Someone might hurt her. I’d die

i f they hurted her. I’d probably have throwed m yself on her to

protect her. I ju st couldn’t bear the thought o f someone

hurting her. Her name was Gringo, because the man who had

her and who named her w asn’t a fine, upstanding citizen, he

was degenerate, and I was afraid he would hurt her, and I was

afraid she would die, and I think there is nothing worse than

knowing an animal is being hurt, except for a child, for which

I thank God I don’t have one, even though my husband would

have taken it away from me, I know. If something’s in your

charge and it must love you then for something cruel to

happen to it must shatter your heart into pieces, by which I

mean the pain is real and it is not made better by time because

the creature was innocent and you are not; or I am not. I kept her

fine. I kept her safe. I kept her sleek and beautiful and without

any sores or any illnesses or any bad things on her skin or any

marks; I kept her gleaming and proud and fine and fed; I kept

her healthy and I kept her strong and I kept her happy; and she

loved me, she did. It was a little beyond an ignorant love, I

truly believe. She knew me by my reverence for her; I was the

one that lit up inside every time my eyes beheld her. I never

could train her to do anything but sit; usually I said sit a second

after she had done it, for my own self-respect; and she pulled

me about one hundred miles an hour down the street; I loved

her exuberance and could not condemn it as bad behavior; I

loved that she was sweet and extrovert and unhaunted and I

didn’t want any shadows forming on her mind from me

shouting or pulling or being an asshole in general; I couldn’t

romp but my heart jum ped when she bounced and wagged

and waved and flew like some giant sparrow heading toward

spring; and I counted on the respect pricks have for big dogs to

keep me safe but it didn’t always, there was always ones that

wanted to fight because she was big, because they thought she

was more male than them, bigger than them, stronger than

them, especially drunks or mean men, and there was men in

the park with bigger dogs who wanted their dogs to hurt her

or fight with her or mount her or bite her or scare her or who

made me m ove by threatening to set their dog on her to show

their dog was bigger or meaner or to make me move because I

was gash according to them and they was men. It’s simple and

always the same. I moved with a deep sense o f being wronged.

I shouldn’t have had to m ove but I couldn’t risk them hurting

her— more real life with a girl and her dog who are hurting no

one. The toilet was too small to take her into and I couldn’t

leave her loose in the hall because some man upstairs, a

completely sour person, hated her and kept threatening to call

all these different city agencies with cops for animals that

would take her away; but probably I w ouldn’t have left her

there anyw ay because I’d be afraid something unexpected

would happen and she’d be helpless; so she had to stay in the

apartment when I went to the toilet and I locked the door to

protect her. It’s unimaginable, how much I loved her. She was

so deep in m y heart I w ould’ve died for her, to keep her safe.

E very single piece o f love I had left in me was love for her;

except for revolutionary love. Y o u become the guardian o f a

creature and it becomes your soul and it brings jo y back to

you, as i f you was pure and young and there was nothing

rough or mean and you had tom orrow, really. She made me

happy by being happy and she loved me, a perfect love, and I

was necessary, beyond the impersonal demands o f the revolution per se. I had always admired the Black Panthers, with a

certain amount o f skepticism, because I been on the streets

they walked and there’s no saints there, M ao’s long march

didn’t go through Camden or Oakland or Detroit or Chicago.

I didn’t get close with Huey until I saw a certain picture. I think

it will be in m y brain until I die. I had admired him; how he

created a certain political reality; how he stood up to police

violence, how he faced them down, then the Survival

Program , free food for children, free shoes, some health care,

teaching reading and writing; it was real brilliant; and he ju st

didn’t die, I mean, you fucking could not kill him, and I

admire them that will not die. I knew he had run wom en but I

also been low ; I couldn’t hold it against him; I couldn’t hold

anything against him, really, because it’s rough to stay alive

and reach for dignity at the same time; you can fucking feed

children on top o f that and you got my respect. I stayed aloof,

also because I wasn’t some liberal white girl, middle-class by

skin, I had to take his measure and I couldn’t do it through

public perceptions or media or propaganda or the persona that

floated through the air waves. I saw him do fucking brilliant

things; I mean, you got to know how hard it is to do fucking

anything; and I saw him survive shootings, the police were

trying to assassinate him, no doubt; and I saw him transcend it;

and I saw him build, not just carry a fucking gun. Then there’s

this picture. H e’s been shot by the police and he’s cuffed to a

gum ey in an emergency room at Kaiser Hospital, October

1967. His chest is bare and raised; it’s raised because his arms

are cuffed to the legs o f the gurney, pulled back towards his

head; he’s wounded but they pulled his arms back so his chest

couldn’t rest on the gurney, so he’s stretched by the manacles,

his chest is sticking up because o f the strain caused by how his

arms are pulled back and restrained, it would hurt anyone, I

have been tied that way, it hurts, you don’t need a bullet in you

for it to give you pain, there’s a white cop in front o f him, fully

dressed, fully armed, looking with surprise at the camera, and

there’s this look on H uey’s face, half smile, half pain, defiant,

his eyes are open, he ain’t going to close them and he ain’t

going to die and he ain’t going to beg and he ain’t going to give

in and he ain’t thinking o f cutting his losses and he ain’t no

slobbering, frightened fool, and behind him there’s a white

nurse doing something and a sign that says “ D irty Needles

And Syringes O n ly, ” and she ain’t looking at him at all, even

though he’s right next to her, right against her side almost. I

have been cuffed that way, physically restrained. I have been

lying there. I have memories when I see this picture, I see m y

life in some o f its aspects, I see a hundred thousand porn

magazines too in which the woman, some woman, is cuffed

the same way, and the cop is or isn’t in the photograph, and the

cuffed woman is white or black, and I see on H uey’s face a

defiance I have never seen on her face or on m y own, not that I

have seen mine but I know what the photo would show, a

vapid pain, a blank, hooded stare, eyes that been dead a long,

long time, eyes that never stared back let alone said fuck you. I

see that he is defiant and that the cop is scared and that the cop

has not won. I see that even though H uey’s chest is raised

because his arms are stretched back and he is cuffed there is

pride in that raised chest. I see that his eyes are open and I see

that there is a clearness in his eyes, a willfulness, they are not

fogged or doped or droopy. I see that he is looking directly at

the camera, he’s saying I am here, this is me, I am, and the

camera can’t take his picture without making his statement. I

see that there is no look o f shame or coyness on his face, he

ain’t saying fuck me. I see that his nakedness is different from

mine, that his pride is unknown to me. I see that the cop and

the nurse are barely existing and that Huey is vivid and real and

alive, he’s jum ping o ff the page and they are robots, ciphers,

automatons, functionaries, he’s bursting with defiance, the

raised chest, however painful, is bursting with pride. I wonder

if anyone would ever jerk o ff to the picture; you know, black

boy in chains; but I don’t believe they would, I don’t, he’s

nobody’s piece o f meat, his eyes w ouldn’t let you and yo u ’d

w orry what he’d do when he’s uncuffed later, his eyes would

see you and he’d come to get you and yo u ’d know it in your

heart and in your hand. H e’s oppressed. He didn’t learn to read

really until he was eighteen. H e’s been low ; he knows. H e’s

put together a grassroots organization that’s defying the cops;

he’s made it international in scope, in reach, in importance.

H e’s poor. He was born socially invisible but darling look at

him now; manacled on that gurney he is fully vivid and alive

and the white nurse and the white cop are sim ply factotums o f

power with nothing that is their ow n; the life’s with him.

They got nothing that does express lam\ whereas Huey, shot,

manacled, naked down to his waist, says lam with his strange,

proud smile that shows the pain and his clear, wide-open eyes

that don’t look away but look right through you, they see you

front to back; and I’ve been on that bed, it’s the bed o f the

oppressed, the same cuffs, the same physical pain, as bad, I

think as bad, the same jeopardy, I have been on that bed; and

they want him to give in and fade away and yet he has endured

and in the picture he is declaring that he will endure, it is in

every aspect o f his demeanor and the camera shows it, he’s

wounded but he’s not afraid, he’s manacled but he’s not

surrendering; he ain’t fucked; he just ain’t fucked; there’s no

other w ay to say it. Even if he’s been fucked in his life, by

which I mean literally, because I don’t know what he’s done or

not done and there’s not too many strangers to being fucked

on the street, he ain’t been fucked; it ain’t what he is. I love him

for it. I fucking love him for it. He’s spectacular and there is a

deep humanism in him that expresses itself precisely in

surviving, not going under, standing up; even tied down, he’s

standing up; and he’s gone beyond the first steps, the original

Black Panther idea that had to do with arming against police

violence, now he’s an apostle o f social equality and he is

fucking feeding the children; he’s been physically hurt and he’s

been laid out on the bed o f pain and his idea o f what’s human

has gotten broader and kinder and more inclusive, and that’s

revolutionary love, and I know it, and I got it, and while

there’s many reasons he can’t trust me, nor me him, we have

been on the same bed o f pain, cuffed, and I didn’t have his

pride, and I need him to teach me; I need to learn it— defiance,

the kind a bullet can’t stop. I don’t know i f he’s kind to women

or not and it worries me but I put it aside because there’s what I

know about that bed o f pain he’s cuffed to; I think I’m

annihilated inside by it; I think I’m shot to hell inside, with

nothing but gangrene everywhere there was a wound; I see, I

feel, an inner collapse that comes from the humiliation o f how

they do you on the bed o f pain; bang bang. I tell him I know

the man; but I don’t know if he knows what I mean. I know

the man. He acts to me with respect as if he grasps m y

meaning. I am trying to say, without saying, that the man

fucked me too; but I don’t know how to say I became it and he

didn’t and now I’m refusing to be it or I’m in the process and

that there’s profound injustice in making someone it, in

crushing them down so their insides are fucked in perpetuity. I

die for men to admire, from a stance o f parity; I admire Huey; I

am struggling for parity, what I see as his revolutionary

dignity and self-definition, his bravery— not in defying

authority, I been through that, but in upending the reality that

said what he was and what was on top o f him. He sends me

poems and m axims, and I am thinking whether to send him

some. I love him. I think maybe he could be for women. In

some speeches he says so. He says men have been arrogant

over women and there’s new freedoms women need to have.

During the days I type for four dollars an hour, which means

that if I am prepared to go ape-shit or stir crazy I could

certainly make up to thirty-two dollars a day, on some days;

but I can only stand to do it four hours or maybe three, and I

really couldn’t stand to do it every day, although I have tried to

for the money, I have tried; if I could do three hours every day

I would be fine, unless something happened. It’s just that I do

it and I do it and I do it and not much time has elapsed it turns

out and I get bored and restless as if m y mind is physically

lifting itself out o f m y head and hitting the walls like some

trapped fly. I feel a profound distaste for it, sitting there and

doing this stupid shit. I feel a bitterness, almost guilt or

remorse, it’s unbearable in the minute or at that time as if I’m

betraying being alive, there’s too much m oving in me and I

cannot fucking waste it in this chickenshit way. It’s not a

matter o f having an idea o f a picture o f life, or taking exception

to the idea o f typing or being a secretary or doing something o f

the sort, I don’t have some prior idea o f how I should be or

how life should be, a magazine picture in my head, you know,

or from television, or from the romances other people say they

want. It ain’t a thought in any sense at all. It’s that I am not her

and I cannot be her, I fucking am not her, I can’t do it, I can’t sit

still and type the shit. It’s just that I want what I want, which is

throughout me, not just my brain, and it’s to feel and move

and fuck. I don’t try to resolve it. I figure you have to be

humble before life. Life tells you, you don’t tell it, and you

can’t argue with what w on’t sit still long enough to be argued

with. I have to break loose one w ay or another, drink or fuck,

find some real noise, you know, a fucking stream o f real noise

and messing around to jum p right in; that’s my way. If it’s

tepid I don’t want it and I don’t do it from habit or just because

it’s there to be done, it’s a big change I made in myself, I have

to feel it bad, I don’t do nothing on automatic; people think if

it’s on the bad side it ain’t bourgeois but I don’t; I think if it’s

tepid it don’t matter what it is class-wise or style-wise. I don’t

solve things in m y mind to impose it on reality, because it ain’t

worth much to do so; for instance, to say you don’t want to be

some fucked thing so don’t fuck. Fucking never feels like you

will end up some fucked thing anyway; it pushes you out so

fast and so far it ain’t a matter o f what you think and it’s stupid

to misidentify it, the problem. Y o u ’re some poor, fragile

person in the middle o f an ocean you never seen the whole of;

you don’t know where it starts or where it stops or how deep

down it goes and what you got to do is swim and hope, hope

and swim; you learn everything you know from it, it don’t

learn a fucking thing from you. Y ou can make promises to

yourself in your mind but your mind is so small up against the

world; you got to have some respect for the world; or so I see it

and that’s m y way; but, then, I ain’t holding out for a pension.

I type m y hours, however many I can make it through,

putting as much pressure on m yself as I can stand, which isn’t

making a lot o f progress, and I keep a time sheet, which I make

as honest as possible but it is hard not because I want to lie but

because I ju st fucking cannot keep track, I can’t pay enough

attention to it to keep track, so I just approximate sort o f

combining what I need with what seems plausible and I come

up with something. I cannot write every fucking thing down

to keep track o f m y time as i f I’m some asshole and I find it

profoundly unbearable to do robot stuff. Sometimes I w ork

for a writer, a poet, and I deliver packages, which at least

means I go on subways and taxis and see places, and I file

papers aw ay alphabetically and I type, except she says you

have to put a space before the colon and a space after it, one

space after it instead o f just no space before it and two spaces

after it as every typist does. In theory I am for defying

convention but typing is something you do automatic like

yo u ’re the machine, not it, and you learn to put two spaces

after the colon and none before it and your hands do that and

your brain ain’t fast enough to stop them and I spend half my

time correcting the stupid thing with white Liquid Paper and

eraser stuff and trying to align it right when I’m typing the

colon back in and I just really want her to drop dead because o f

it. Passions can be monumental. I can barely keep my ass on

the typing chair at her desk; I mean, she owns the desk; she has

her desk, a big desk, and then the desk where I sit, a little desk

and her desk is in her big room and m y desk is in a little

anteroom right o ff her big room so she can always see me but

I’m o ff to the side, relegated to being help in a clear w ay; it has

its own eloquence and I feel it acutely and it gets me mad. I try

to take the typing home with me so I don’t have to sit at the

little desk in the little room with her watching but she wants

me to do it there and there’s this tug o f war. She’s real

seductive and I am too fucking bored to care because if I give in

to it then I will have to be there more and if I am there more I

will have to type more and if I have to type more I will die.

There’s apparently some edge she sees; she thinks I’m

turbulent, she says; I think I’m calm and patient in a world o f

endless and chaotic bullshit, which I say but it falls on deaf

ears; I smile and I’m nice and completely calm except for when

I have to bolt but she sees some street tough or something wild

and gets all excited and I don’t have a lot o f respect for it; she

says I’m pure. I just smile because I don’t know what bullshit it

is exactly. Even if I don’t type she keeps me around. I can

barely keep m yself under wraps sometimes, frankly; I want to

bolt. I smile, I’m nice, I’m calm, but she treats me careful, as if

I’m volatile or dangerous somehow, which I am not, because

in m y soul I am a real sweetheart which is the truth, a deep

truth, an honest truth, I don’t yell or shout or think how to

hurt people and I feel dedicated to peace as she is too. I just get

bored so deep it hurts the pits o f me, stomach and groin

precisely, I feel a long pain and I can’t sit still through it; it’s

hit-the-road pain. She tells me how to be a writer and I listen

because as long as I am listening I don’t have to type; I listen,

though often I’m bored, and I haven’t mastered the art o f inner

stillness, though I will, I am sure. Then there’s the lovemaking

part, a moment comes, and I slide out from under, with a

certain newfound grace, I must say, and if I can’t slide, I bolt,

and it’s abrupt. She keeps me on, even though I never exactly

get the typing done or the filing done and she never nails me;

never. It’s a long walk to her place to type and I walk it often,

because I fucking love to walk, even though it’s stupid and not

safe and you have to be a prophet who can look down a street

and know what it’s got in store for you, and I do it happy and

proud and I fucking love the long walks. I go there and back

early and late and sometimes I get there and I just can’t bear to

stay so I leave right away, I take some cup o f coffee or food,

fast, with her, she’ll always make me something as if it’s

natural, and the typing doesn’t get done but I don’t have some

money either. Other times she gives me a cash advance and I

have it burning in m y hand and if I’m feeling slow and

stringent with m yself I get it to the bank and i f I'm feeling

restless, all speeded up, wanting to spit in the eye o f God, out

drink Him, out fuck Him, I keep it on me. I type, I walk long

walks across town, ballets on cement, jum ping and hopping

and then a slow, melancholy step, solemn or arms sw inging,

in the face o f the wind or in drizzle or rain or in sun, in calm,

cool sun. I walk m y sweet and jubilant dog in the neighborhood protecting the pads o f her feet from the stupid glass the winos leave all broken all over and the fucking junkie shit

that’s all over, and then there’s the time each day I sit down in

purposeful concentration to write in a notebook, some

sentences on a buried truth, an unnamed reality, things that

happened but are denied. It is hard to describe the stillness it

takes, the difficulty o f this act. It requires an almost perfect

concentration which I am trying to learn and there is no w ay to

learn it that is spelled out anywhere or so I can understand it

but I have a sense that it’s completely simple, on the order o f

being able to sit still and keep your mind dead center in you

without apology or fear. I squirm after some time but it ain’t

boredom, it’s fear o f w hat’s possible, how much you can

know if you can be quiet enough and simple enough. I m ove

around, m y mind wanders, I lose the ability to take words and

roll them through m y brain, m ove with them into their

interiors, feel their colors, touch w hat’s under them, where

they come from long ago and w ay back. I get frightened

seeing what’s in m y own mind if words get put to it. T here’s a

light there, it’s bright, it’s wide, it could make you blind if you

look direct into it and so I turn away, afraid; I get frightened

and I run and the only w ay to run is to abandon the process

altogether or com prom ise it beyond recognition. I think about

Celine sitting with his shit, for instance; I don’t know w hy he

didn’t run, he should’ve. It’s a quality you have to have o f

being near mad and at the same time so quiet in your heart that

you could pass for a spiritual warrior; you could probably

break things with the power in your mind. You got to be able

to stand it, because it’s a powerful and disturbing light, not

something easy and kind, it comes through your head to make

its w ay onto the page and you get fucking scared so your mind

runs away, it wanders, it gets distracted, it buckles, it deserts,

it takes a Goddamn freight train if it can find one, it wants

calming agents and soporifics, and you mask that you are

betraying the brightest and best light you will ever see, you are

betraying the mind that can be host to it; Blake’s light, which

he was not afraid o f and did not betray; Whitman’s light which

he degraded into some fucking singsong song like he was

Dinah Shore or Patti Page, how much is that doggie in the

w indow; the words didn’t rise up from the light, only from a

sentimental wish, he had a shadow life and in words he piled

shadow on shadow so there’s this tumult, a chaos o f dreams

running amok; dreams are only shadows; whereas Blake’s

light is perfect and pure, inside the words, so lucid, so simple,

so plain; never a cartoonish lie. O f course it’s different for me

because I turned tricks and been fucked nearly to death and I

have been made weary with dirt and m y mind’s been buried

alive, really, smashed down right into the ground, pushed

under deep; but something ain’t different if I could conquer the

fear o f seeing and knowing, if I wasn’t so afraid o f the light

burning right through m y stupid brain. Y ou want to smoke a

joint or something to make it calmer and duller; not brighter;

it ain’t brighter; it calms you right down or it frenzies you up

but so you are distracted, mentally m oving here and there,

you want something between you and the light, a shield, a

permeable barrier, you want to defuse it or deflect it, to

m ellow it out, to make it softer, not so deadly to your own

soul, not so likely to blow all your own circuits, you can’t

really stand too much light in a world where you got to get

used to crawling around like an insect in the dark, because it’s

like mining coal in that if you don’t get out o f the mine what

goes through you will collapse you. Y o u r mind does stupid

tricks to mask that you are betraying something o f grave

importance. It wanders so you w o n ’t notice that you are

deserting your own life, abandoning it to triviality and

garbage, how you are too fucking afraid to use your own brain

for what it’s for, which is to be a host to the light, to use it, to

focus it; let it shine and carry the burden o f what is illuminated,

everything buried there; the light’s scarier than anything it

shows, the pure, direct experience o f it in you as if your mind

ain’t the vegetable thing it’s generally conceived to be or the

nightmare thing you know it to be but a capacity you barely

imagined, real; overwhelm ing and real, pushing you out to

the edge o f ecstasy and knowing and then do you fall or do you

jum p or do you fly? Life can concentrate itself right in your head

and you get scared; it is cowardice. I notice that my eyes start to

wander across the wall, back and forth, keep wandering across

nothing, or looking at the fucking paint, I notice that my feet are

moving and I’m shifting on the chair, a straight-back wood chair

you have to sit still on, there’s no license to move but I’m

moving, rattling m y feet, rocking, rocking on m y heels, and

then there’s an urgent sensation in m y thighs and in my hips and

wherever sex is down there, whatever you want to call it, there’s

only bad names for it but it isn’t bad and it is real and it sends you

out, it sends you away, it makes you impatient and distracted,

and I feel like busting out, and some nights I do, I bust out. I take

all the money I got on me, and if it’s ten dollars I’m flush, and I

ju st bolt, I get out and drink, I find a man, sometimes a

woman, sometimes both, I like both at once, I like being

drunk, or I start out just for a drink and I end up with

someone, drunk; fucking happy drunk; no light but everything glistens; no illumination but everything shines. Som etimes I ju st walk, I can walk it off, aimlessly. It’s as dangerous as fucking, takes nearly the same adrenaline, just to take a walk

at night, even if you walk towards the neon and not towards

the dark park; ain’t a woman in Amerika walks towards the

park. If I can calm m yself I go home. But there’s times if I was

a man I’d kill someone. I feel wild and mean and I’m tired o f

being messed with, I got invisible bars all around me and I

have blame in my heart to them that put them there and I want

to fucking tear them apart, I want my insides turned out in

bruising them, I don’t want no skin left on me that ain’t

roughed them up, I want them bloodied, I want to dance in

men’s blood, the cha-cha, the polka, the tango, the rhumba,

hard, fast, angular dances or stomping dances or slow killing

dances, the murder waltz, I want to mix it up with killing right

next to me, on m y side; it’s hot in my heart and cold in my

brain and I ain’t ever going to feel sorry; or I’d take one o f them

boys and I’d turn him inside out and put something up his ass

and I’d hear him howl and I’d expect a thank-you and a yes

m a’am; and I would get it. D on’t matter how dangerous you

feel, all the danger’s to you, so it’s best to settle down and end

up back inside your stupid fucking walls that you wanted so

much; alone, inside the walls, a Valium maybe or a ’lude so

you don’t do no damage to yourself; love your walls, citizen. I

want them bruised and bloodied but I don’t get what I want as

m y mama used to tell me but I didn’t believe her; besides I

wanted something different then; her point was that I had to

learn the principle that I wasn’t supposed to get what I wanted;

and m y point was that I wasn’t going to learn it. Y ou don’t

name someone not-cunt and then betray the meaning and

make them fit in cages; I didn’t learn it, fucking bitch o f a

mother. It’s a rainy night. The rain is slick over the cement and

on the buildings like diamonds dripping; a liquid dazzle all soft

and rolling and swelled up, like a teardrop. It’s one o f them

magic nights where the rain glow s and the neon is dull next to

it; like God lit a silver flame in the water, it’s a warm , silver,

glassy shine, it sparkles, it’s a night but it ain’t dark

because it’s a slick light you could skate on and everything

looks translucent and as if it’s m oving, it slides, it shines. It’s

beckoning to me as i f God took a paint brush and covered the

w orld in crystal and champagne. It’s wet diamonds out there,

lush and liquid, I never could pass up the sparkle, it’s a wet,

shimmering night, a wet, dazzling night; but warm, as if it’s

breathing all over you, as if it’s wrapped around you, a

cocoon, that w ispy stuff. If there’s acid in your brain

everything’s fluid and monstrous bright; this is as if the acid’s

out there, spread over the city, the sidewalks are drenched in it

and the buildings are bathed in it and the air is saturated with it,

nothing’s standing still and it is monstrous bright and I love

the fucking city when it’s stoned. Inside it’s dull and dry and

I’m not in a constructive mood and there is a pain that runs

down me like a river, a nasty, surging river, a hard river, a

river that starts up high and races down to below falling more

than flowing, falling and breaking, shattering; it’s a river that

goes through me top to bottom; the pain’s intractable and I can

barely stand it; it’s not all jo ie de vivre when a girl goes

dancing; the pain’s a force o f nature beyond my ability to bear

and I can’t take the edge o ff it very easy and I can’t stand

needles and I can’t sit still with it and I can’t rip it out, although

if it was located right precisely in m y heart I would try, I

would take m y fucking hands and I would take m y fucking

fingers and I would rip m y chest open and I would try. It’s

raining and the rain makes me all steamy and damp inside and

out and it ain’t a man I want, it’s a drink, a dozen fucking

drinks to blot out the hard pain and the hard time, each and

every dick I ever sucked, and the bottle ain’t enough because I

can’t stand the quiet, a quiet bottle in a quiet room; I can’t

stand the quiet, lonely bottle in the quiet, lonely room. Lonely

ain’t a state o f mind, it’s a place o f being; a room with no one

else in it, a street with no one else on it; a city abandoned in the

rain; em pty, wet streets; cement that stretches uptown,

downtown, empty, warm, wet, until the sky starts, a

perspiring sky; empty cars parked on empty streets, damp,

deserted streets lined with dark, quiet buildings, civilized,

quiet stone, decorous, a sterile urban formalism; the windows

are closed, they’re sleeping or dead inside, you w on’t know

until morning really, a gas could have seeped in and killed

them in the night; or invaders from outer space; or some lethal

virus. I need noise; real noise; honest, bad noise; not random

sounds or a few loud voices or the electronic drone o f

someone’s television seeping out o f a cracked w indow; not

some dignified singer or some meaningful lyric; not something small or fine or good or right; I need music so loud you

can’t hear it, as when all the trees in the forest fall; and I need

noise so real it eats up the air because it can’t live on nothing; I

need noise that’s like steak, just so thick and just so tough and

ju st so immoral, thick and tough and dead but bloody, on a

plate, for the users, for the fucking killers, to still their hearts,

to numb anything still left churning; a percussive ambience for

the users. It’s got to be brute so it blocks out anything subtle or

nuanced or kind, even, and it’s got to be unceasing so you can’t

hear a human breath and it’s got to stomp on you so your heart

almost stops beating and it’s got to be lunatic, unorganized,

perpetual, and it has to be in a crowded room where there’s

gristle and muscle and cold, mean men and you can’t hear the

timbre o f their voices and you don’t need to see them or touch

them because the noise has you, it’s air, it’s water, you

breathe, you swim; I need noise, and it’s too late to buy a bottle

anyway, even if I had enough money, because it is very dear, it

would be like buying a diamond tiara for a princess or some

fine clothes, a fine jew el, it is out o f m y reach, I have not had

one o f m y own ever and I don’t count the bottles you can’t see

in the paper bags because that is a different thing altogether,

more like gasoline or like someone took matches and lit up

your throat or yo u ’re pouring kerosene down it or some

sharp-edged thing scrapes it raw. I need enough bills to keep,

drinking so no one’s going to chase me aw ay or say I can’t pay

rent on the stool or so I don’t have to smile at no one or so no

bartender don’t have me throwed out; I am fearful about that;

they always treat you so illegitimate but if you can show

enough money they will tolerate you sitting there. There’s not

enough money for me to eat even if they’d let me so I put that

out o f m y mind, I would like lobster o f course with the biggest

amount o f drawn butter, just drenched in it, ju st so much it

drips down and you can feel it spreading out inside your

mouth all rich and glorious, it’s like some divine silky stu ff but

there’s never enough o f it and I have to ask for more and they

act parsimonious and shocked. If you sit at a table you have to

buy dinner, they don’t have some idea that you could just sit

there and be cool and watch or have a little o f this and a little o f

that; they only have the idea that everyone’s lying, you know,

everyone’s pretending, everyone’s trying to rip them off,

everyone’s pretending to be rich so they have to see the money

or everyone’s pretending they’re going to eat so they have to

see the m oney or everyone’s pretending they can pay for the

drinks so they have to see the money and if yo u ’re a woman

you don’t get a table even i f you got money; m y idea is if I have

enough m oney and I put it out in front o f me on the bar and I

keep drinking and drinking I can stay there and then I don’t

have to look to m y right or to m y left at a man for a fucking

thing; I can i f I want but I am not obliged. I’m usually too shy

to push m y w ay in and I’ve never tried it, I ju st know yo u ’re

not supposed to be there alone, but tonight I want to drink, it’s

what I want like some people want to win the Indy 500 or

there’s some that want to walk on the moon; I want to drink;

pure. I want to sit there and have m y ow n stool and I don’t

want to have to be worried about being asked to leave or made

to leave because I’m ju st some impoverished girl or gash that’s

loose. I will stare at the clear liquid, crystal, in the glass, and I

will contemplate it as a beautiful thing and I will feel the pain

that is monumentally a part o f me and I will keep drinking and

I will feel it lessen and I will feel the warmth spread out all over

me inside and I will feel the surging, hard, nasty river go

warmer and smoother and silkier as the Stoli runs with it, as it

falls from top to bottom inside me, first it’s on the surface o f

the river, then it’s deeper down in it, then it’s a silk, burning

stream, a great, warm stream, and it will gentle the terrible

river o f pain. I will think deeply; about art; about life; I will

keep thoughts pouring through me as inside I get warmer and

calmer and it hurts less, the hurt dims and fades or hides under

a fucking rock, I don’t care; and m y brow will curl, you know,

sullen, troubled, melancholy, as if I’m some artist in m y own

right myself; and the noise will be beautiful to me, part o f a

new esthetic I am cultivating, and I will hear in it the tumult o f

bare existence and the fierce resonance o f personal pain as if it’s

a riff from Charlie Parker to God and I will hear in it the

anarchic triumph o f m y own individual soul over the deep evil

that has maimed me. I take the bills and crush them into m y

pocket and I walk, I run, I light down the stairs and out the

building, I leave my quiet room, and I hit the streets and I

walk, fast, dedicated, determined, stubborn, filled with fury,

spraying piss and vinegar, to M ax’s, about twelve blocks from

where I live, an artists’ restaurant and bar, because I know it

will be filled with ramrod hard noise and heat, a crush o f hard,

noisy men, artists and poseurs and I don’t know the difference,

poseurs and the famous and I don’t know the difference, it’s a

modern crime but I can’t concentrate on it enough to

remember the ones you’re supposed to know, except Warhol

because he’s so strange and he’d stand out anywhere and I

don’t want to go near him; but the difference mostly is that I

think I am the artist, not them, but you can’t say that and it’s

hard even to keep thinking it though I don’t know w hy it’s so

hard, maybe because girls aren’t ever it; but all the poseurs and

all the famous will be at the tables where I can’t go, even if I

had money to eat they w ouldn’t let me eat there, not alone,

and I w o n ’t be one o f the pleading girls who is begging to be

allowed to go to the tables, I will just get a stool at the bar if the

guy at the door lets me in, he might not and usually I am too

shy to defy him and I hang tight with a man but tonight I want

in myself, I want the noise and the hard edge and the crush and

I want to drink, I want to find a place at the bar for m yself and

it’s got m y name on it even though I don’t got no name for the

purposes o f the man at the door but the stool’s mine and I will

drink and I will stay as long as I have bills in front o f me and it’s

an unwritten law about girls, that they don’t let you sit

anywhere, so you never quite understand w hy you can be

somewhere sometimes and not the same place the next time

and you figure out you got to hang on to a man and you are his

shadow, like Wendy sewing Peter Pan’s shadow back on. It

sure insures a steady flow o f affection wom an to man if you

can’t even sit down without one. Tonight I have a singular

distaste for a man. I’m not starting out with any interest

whatsoever. H e’d have to catch m y eye like starlight or it’d

have to be like fairy dust where you want some and you need a

taste, it’s something that tickles you deep down but you can’t

reach it to scratch, like the cut o f a record you listen to a

thousand times or you got a taste you can’t get rid o f so yo u ’re

like some fucking hamster on one o f them wheels just running

and running or yo u ’re skim ming coke o ff the top o f something or smack o ff the top o f something, you just get smitten,

lightly but completely, stuck in the moment but also riveted

so you can’t shake it loose, infatuated now , freedom now ,

there’s some special charge com ing from him and yo u ’re

plugged in and it’s sparking, it’s not like you want to get laid

and yo u ’re looking for someone w h o ’s going to be good, it’s

more like some trait you can’t identify strikes you wham , it’s

got an obsession lurking under it, it’s a light feeling but under

it is a burning habit, a habit you ain’t got yet but you just want

to play with it once, like skinpopping heroin or something,

you know, it ain’t serious but you want it. I take an energetic

walk with the city all glowing wet, all sparkling, for me, as if

it’s for me, the light’s for me and the rain’s for me and it’s

stoned out o f its fucking mind for me; and the buildings are

just pure glitter and the light’s coming down from heaven

luscious and wet; for me. The boy at the door can’t keep me

out because I stride in and I am aglow; he’s a mandarin

standing there with his little list and his leather jacket and his

pretensions and his snobbish good looks and I mumble words

I know he can’t hear and I never yet met a man who wasn’t

stupider than me and he’s trying to decide am I someone or not

and I am not fucking anyone but I am striding in my

motorcycle boots and I am wet and I am bound for glory at the

bar and I push m y w ay through the crowd and fuck him and

he’s watching me, he sees that I ain’t headed for a table which

would transgress the laws o f the universe, and it ain’t a girl’s

trick to sit somewhere she ain’t entitled because a man didn’t

pick her out already; he sees I want the bar and I suppose it’s

faintly plausible that a girl might want a drink on her own or it

confuses him enough that he hesitates and he who hesitates is

lost. I take out all the bills I have and he’s watching me do it

and I put it down in front o f me, a nice pile, substantial, and I

am firm ly sitting on a stool and I have spread m y elbows out

on the bar to take up enough space to declare I am alone and

here to drink and he don’t know I don’t have more money and

I order m y Stoli on the rocks and I ain’t making no move to

take m y change or m ove m y money so he relaxes as if letting

me there will not do monumental harm to the system that is in

place and that it is his jo b to protect and the bodies close in

around me to protect me from his scrutiny and the noise closes

in around me and I am swallowed up and I disappear and I am

completely cosseted and private and safe and I feel like some

new thing, just new ly alive, and there’s the placenta hugging

me and I’m wet with fucking life and I stare into m y fucking

drink, m y triumphal drink, I stare into it as if it’s tea leaves and

I’m the w orld ’s oldest, wisest gypsy, I got gold earrings down

to m y knees and I got foresight and hindsight and I am a reader

o f history, there’s layers o f history, vulgar and occult, in the

stu ff and if you lit a fire to it yo u ’d burn history up. And shit I

love it; a solitary human being covered all over by noise, a

dense noise that bubbles and burns and cracks all over you like

fire, small fire, a million tiny, exploding fires; or a superhuman embrace by some green, slim y, scaly monster, it’s big and all over you and messy, it’s turbulent and dramatic and

ever so much bigger than a man and its embrace is overwhelming, a descent, an invasion that covers the terrain, a

crush o f locusts but you aren’t repelled, only exhilarated at

how awesome it is, how biblical, how spectacular; like as i f it

took you back to ancient E gypt and you saw something

sublime in the desert and you had to walk across it but you

could; it wraps itself around you like some spectacular excess

o f nature not man, yo u ’re crawling with it but it ain’t bad and

it ain’t loathsome and there’s no fear, it’s just exactly extreme

enough and wild enough and it says it’s nighttime in human

history now in Am erika and Moses has his story and you have

yours and each o f you gets the whole universe to roll around in

because everything was made to converge at the point where

you are amidst all the rest o f life o f whatever kind, com position, or characteristics, it’s a great mass all around you, the blob, a loud blob, Jell-O , loud Jell-O , and yo u ’re some frail,

simple thing at the center and what you are to them doesn’t

matter because the noise protects you from knowing what you

are to them; noise has a beauty and noise has a function and a

quiet girl sometimes needs it because the night is long and life

is hard and pain is real and you stare into the glass and you

drink, darling, you drink, and you contemplate and you

drink; you go slow and you speed up and you drink; and you

are a deep thinker and you drink; and you have some hazy,

romantic thoughts and some vague philosophical leanings and

you drink; and you remember some pictures that flash by in

your mind and you drink; and there’s sad feelings for a fleeting

minute and you drink; and you choreograph an uprising, the

lumpen rise up, and you drink; and there’s Camden reaching

right out for you, it’s taking you back, and you drink; a man

nudges you from the right and you drink; he puts his face right

up close to yours and you drink; he’s talking about something

or other and you drink; you don’t look left or right, you just

drink, it’s worship, it’s celebration, you’d kneel down except

for that you might not be able to synchronize your movements, in your heart you kneel; and you drink; you taste it and

you roll it around your tongue and down on into your throat

and down on into your chest and you get fiery and warm and

you drink it down hard and fast and you sit stone still in

solemn concentration and you drink; the noise holds you

there, it’s almost physical, the noise, it’s a superhuman

embrace, bigger than a man’s, it’s swamp but not swam py, it’s

dry and dark and hot and popping, it’s dense and down and

dirty and you drink; the noise keeps you propped up, your

back upright and your legs bent and your feet firm ly balanced

on the stool, except the stool’s higher now, and you drink; and

yo u ’re like Alice, you’re getting smaller and it’s getting

bigger, and then you remember Humpty Dum pty was a

fucking eggshell and you could fall and break and D orothy got

lost in Oz and Cinderella was made into a pumpkin or nearly

such and there’s a terrible decline and fall awaiting you, fear

and travail, because the m oney’s gone, you been handing it

over to the big man behind the bar and you been drinking and

you been contemplating and the pile’s gone and there’s terrible

challenges ahead, like physically getting o ff the stool and

physically getting out o f the room and physically getting

home; it hardly seems possible that you could actually have so

many legs and none o f them have any bones that stand up

straight and you break it down into smaller parts; pay up so the

bartender don’t break your fingers; get o ff the stool; stand up;

walk, try not to lean on anyone, you can’t use the men as

leaning posts, you can’t volley yourself to the front sort o f

springing o ff one after the other, because one or another will

consider it affection; get to the door; don’t fall on the mandarin

with the list, don’t trip in front o f him, don’t throw up; open

the door on your own steam; get out the door fully clothed,

jacket, T-shirt, keys; once outside, you make another plan.

These are hard things; some o f them may actually be

impossible. It may be impossible to pay the bartender because

you may have drunk too much and it may be impossible to get

o ff the stool and it may be impossible to walk and it may be

impossible to stand up and it may be impossible to find the

door. It’s sad, yo u ’re an orphan and it’s hard to concentrate,

what with poor nutrition and a bad education; but sociology

w ill not save your ass if you drank more money than you got

because a citizen has to pay their bar bills. There’s tw o dollars

sitting on the bar in front o f you, the remains o f your pile like

old bones, fragments o f an archaic skeleton, little remnants o f

a big civilization dug up and yo u ’re eyeing it like it’s the grail

but with dishonorable intent and profane desire. It’s rightly

the bartender’s. H e’s been taking the money as it’s been due

with righteous discipline, which is w hy you ain’t overdrawn

on the account; you asked him in a tiny mouse voice afraid o f

the answer, you squeaked in the male din, a frightened

whisper, you asked him if you owed, you got up the nerve,

and yo u ’re straight with him as far as it goes but these extra

bills are rightly his; or you could have another drink; but you

had wanted to end it well, with some honor; and also he ain’t a

waitress, dear, and the m oney’s got his mark on it; and he ain’t

cracked a smile or said a tender word all night, which a girl

ain’t used to, he don’t like girl drinkers as a matter o f principle

you assume, he’s fast, he’s quiet, he’s got a hard, cold face with

a square ja w and long, oily hair and a shirt half open and a long

earring and bad teeth and he’s aloof and cold to you; and then

suddenly, so fast it didn’t happen, there’s a big, warm hand on

your hand, a big, hairy hand, and he’s squeezing your fingers

around the two dollars and he’s half smiling, one half o f his

face is smiling, and he says darling take a fucking cab. Y ou

stare at him but you can’t exactly see him; his face ain’t all in

one piece; it’s sort o f split and moving; and before you exactly

see his mouth move and hook it up with his words he’s gone,

w ay to a foreign country, the other end o f the bar where

they’re having bourbon, some cowboys with beards and hats.

Life’s always kind in a pinch. The universe opens up with a

gift. There’s generosity, someone gives you something special

you need; two dollars and you don’t have to suck nothing, you

are saved and the man in his generosity stirs you deeply.

Y o u ’re inspired to succeed with the rest o f the plan— move,

stand, walk, execute each detail o f the plan with a military

precision, although you wish you could take o ff your T-shirt

because it’s very hot but you follow the plan you made in your

mind and although your legs buckle and the ground isn’t solid,

it’s swelling and heaving, you make it past the strange, w avy

creatures with the deep baritone voices and the erections and

you get out, you get out the door even though it’s hard and

yo u ’re afraid because you can see outside that it’s raining, it’s

raining very hard, it’s pouring down, it’s so wet, you really

have an aversion to it because all your clothes will be drenched

and soaking and your lungs will be wet and your bones will

get all damp and wet and you can’t really see very well and the

rain’s too heavy and everything looks different from before

and you can’t really see through the rain and it’s getting in

your eyes as if your eyes are under water and burning, all

drowned in water, they hurt, and everything’s blurred and

your hair’s all wet as if it w o n ’t ever be dry again and there’s

water in your ears deep down and it hurts and everything's

chilly and wet. The w o rld ’s wet and watery and without

definition and without any fixed places o f reference or fixed

signs and it’s as if the city’s floating by you, like some flood

uprooted everything and it’s loose on the rapids and everywhere you step you are in a flood o f racing cold water. Y ou r feet are all wet and your legs are all wet and you squoosh in

your boots and all your clothes are soaked through and you are

dripping so much that it is as if you yourself are raining,

w ater’s flooding o ff you and it’s useless to be a person with

legs who counts on solid ground because here you have to

walk through water, which isn’t easy, yo u ’re supposed to

sw im through it but there’s not enough to swim through and

there’s too much to walk through, it’s as if yo u ’re glued and

gum m y and loose and the ground’s loose and the water’s loose

and yo u ’re breathing in water as much as air and you feel like

some fucking turkey that’s going to drow n in the rain; which

probably you will. Y o u ’re trying to walk home and it’s been a

long time, the old trick o f putting one foot in front o f the other

doesn’t seem to be working and you don’t seem to have got

very far but it’s hard to tell since nothing looks right or

familiar and everything’s under water and blurry and yo u ’re

cold and sort o f fixed in place because the w ater’s weighing

you down, kind o f making you so heavy you can’t really m ove

as i f yo u ’re an earthbound person m oving effortlessly through

air as is the case with normal people on normal days because it

ain’t air, it’s water. Y o u ’re all wet as if you was naked and your

clothes are wet and heavy as if they was lead and your breasts

are sore from the wet and the cold and your pubic hair’s all

wet and rubbing up against the wet stu ff all bunched up in

your crotch and there’s rain rolling down your legs and

com ing out the bottom o f your pants and yo u ’d be happier

naked, wet and naked, because the clothes feel very bad on

you, wet and bad. T h ey’re heavy and nasty and cold. The

m oney’s in your hand and it’s all wet, all rained out, soaking

wet, and your hand’s clutched, and you try proceeding

through the wet blur, you need to stay on the sidewalks and

you need to avoid oncoming cars and turning cars and crazy

cars that can’t see any better than you and you need to see the

traffic lights and you need to see what’s in front o f you and

w hat’s on the side o f you and what’s behind you, just as on any

regular day, and at night even more; but you can’t see and the

rain keeps you from hearing as well and you proceed slow ly

and you don’t get too far; it’s been a long time you been out

here and you haven’t gone but half a block and you are

drenched in water and breathing too fast and breathing too

hard and your legs aren’t carrying you right and the ground’s

not staying still and the water’s pushing you from behind and

it’d like to flatten you out and roll over you, and it ain’t nice

lapping against the calves o f your legs; and a cab stops; which

you have barely ever ridden in before, not on your own; it

stops; you’ve been in them when someone’s given you money

to deliver packages and said where to go and exactly what to

do and how much it would cost and still you were scared it

would cost too much and you wouldn’t have it and something

terrible would happen; a cab stops and you don’t know if two

dollars is enough or if he thinks you’re turning tricks, a dumb

wet whore, or if he just wants to fuck or if you could get inside

and he’d just take you home, a passenger; a cab stops and

yo u ’re afraid to get in because you’re not a person who rides in

cabs even in extremis even though you have two dollars and

it’s for taking a cab as the bartender said if you didn’t dream it

and probably he knows how much everything costs; a cab

stops; and yo u ’re wet; and you want to go home; and if you

got in the cab you could be home almost right away, very

close to right away, you could be home in just some few

minutes instead o f a very long time, because if you walk you

don’t know how long it will take or how tired yo u ’ll be and

you could get so tired you just stop somewhere to give up, a

doorw ay, an abandoned car, or even if you keep going it will

take a long time; and i f you got in the cab you could sit still for

a few minutes in perfect dignity and it would be dry and quiet

and you would be in the back, a passenger, and you could

ju m p if he pulled shit, if he started driving wild or going

somewhere strange, and yo u ’d give him the tw o dollars and

he’d take you home, and you get in the cab, it’s dark and

leather and yo u ’re scared about the m oney so you say upfront

that you only got two dollars and he asks where yo u ’re going

and you say and he says fine, it’s fine, it’s okay, it’s no

problem, and he says it’s raining and you say yeah, it is; and he

says some quiet, simple things, like sometimes it rains too

hard, and you say yes; he’s quiet and softspoken and there’s

long, curly hair cascading down his back and he says that I’m

wet with some sym pathy and I say yes I am; and he asks me

what I do in a quiet and sympathetic w ay and I say I’m a writer;

and he says he’s a musician, very quiet, nice; and I say I drank

too much, I was writing and I got restless and I got drunk and

he says yes he knows what that’s like, very quiet, very nice,

he’s done it too, everyone does it sometimes, but he doesn’t

keep talking, he’s very quiet, he talks soft, not a lot, and there’s

quiet moments and I think he’s pretty nice and I’m trying to

watch the streets to see where we are and w e’re going towards

where I live but up and down blocks, it doesn’t seem direct but

I don’t know because I don’t drive and I don’t know if there’s

one-w ay streets and the meter’s o ff anyw ay and he’s English

like in films with a distinguished accent, sort o f tough like

Albert Finney but he talks quiet and nice, a little dissonant; he’s

sort o f slim and delicate, you know how pretty a man can be

when he’s got fine features, chiseled, and curls, and he’s sort o f

waif-like, kind o f like a child in Dickens, appealing with a pull

to the heart, street pretty but softspoken, not quite hard, not

apparently cynical, not a regular N ew Y ork taxi driver as I’ve

seen them, all squat and old, but graceful, lithe, slight, young,

younger than me probably, new, not quite used but not

untouched, virginal but available, you can have him but it isn’t

quite right to touch him, he’s withdrawn and aloof and it

appears as a form o f refinement, he’s delicate and finely made,

you wonder what it would be like to touch him or if he’d be

charmed enough to touch you back, it’s a beauty without

prettiness except this one’s pretty too, too pretty for me, I

think, I never had such a pretty, delicate boy put together so

fine, pale, the face o f an old, inbred race, now decadent,

fragile, bloodless, with the heartrending beauty o f fine old

bones put together delicately, reconstructed under glass, it

w ouldn’t really be right to touch it but still you want to, just

touch it; and you couldn’t really stop looking at him in the

m irror o f the taxi, all the parts o f his face barely hang together,

all the parts are fragile and thin, it’s delicate features and an

attitude, charm and insouciance but with reserve, he puts out

and he holds back, he decides, he’s used to being wanted, he’s

aloof, or is it polite, or is it gentle? He turns around and smiles

and it’s like angel dust; I’m dusted. I get all girlish and

embarrassed and I think, really, he’s too pretty, he doesn’t

mean it, and there’s a real tense quiet and we drive and then he

stops and w e’re there and I hand him the two dollars because

we agreed and he says real quiet, maybe I could come in, and I

say yes, and I’m thinking he’s so pretty, it’s like being in a

m ovie with some movie star you have a crush on only he’s

coming with you and it’s not in a movie but you know how a

crush on someone in a film makes you crazy, so weird, as if

you could really touch him even though he’s flat and on film

and the strange need you think you have for him and the things

you think you would do with him, those are the feelings,

because I have a stupid crush, an insane crush, a boy-crazy

crush, and I am thinking this is a gorgeous night with the

visitation o f this fine boy but I am so fucking drunk I can

barely get up the steps and I think he’ll turn around and go

because it can’t be nice for him and now he can see how drunk;

smashed; as if I got Stoli pumping through m y heart and it’s

fumes I’m inhaling, fumes rising out o f m y ow n veins or rising

from m y chest, like a fog rising out o f m y chest, and I am

falling down drunk and such a fool, in m y heart I am romantic

for him, all desire and affection verging on an impolite

hunger, raw, greedy, now, now, but there’s m y beautiful

dog, m y very gorgeous and fine dog, m y heart, m y beast o f

jo y and love, m y heart and soul, m y friend on romps and good

times around the block, and she’s jum ping up and down and

she’s licking me and she’s jum ping all over me and it makes me

fall and I say I have to walk her because I do, I must, she’s got

rights, I explain, I have this idea she’s got rights, and I think he

will leave now but he says, very quiet and nice, oh I’ll walk

her, you ju st lie here, and I am flat out drunk, laid out drunk,

flat and drunk on m y bed, a mattress on the floor, barely a

mattress, a cut piece o f foam rubber, hard and flat, it’s an

austere bed for serious solitude or serious sex and I am fucking

stretched out and the walls move, a fast circle dance, and he

takes her leash and they leave and I’m smiling but time goes by

and I get scared, I start waiting, I start feeling time brushing by

me, I start thinking I will never see m y dog again and I think

what have I done and I think I will die from losing her if he

doesn’t bring her back and I think I have to call the police or I

have to follow him and find him or I have to get up and get out

and call to her and I think about life without her if she were

gone and I’d die and I try to m ove an arm but I can’t m ove it

and there’s a pain coming into m y heart which says I am a pale

shadow o f what you will feel the rest o f your life if she’s gone,

it says yo u ’ll mourn the rest o f your life and there’s a grief that

will burn up your insides and leave them just bare and burned

and em pty, burned ugly and barren, obliterated; and I know

that if she’s gone I’m going to pull m yself to pieces, pull my

mind apart, tear m yself open, rend my breast, turn m y heart to

sackcloth, make ashes out o f m y heart; if she’s gone I’m lost; a

wanderer in madness and pain; despondent; a vagabond

turned loose one last time, sad enough to turn the world to

hell; I’ll touch it, anything before me, and make it hell. I will

rage on these streets a lifetime and I will build fires from

garbage in buildings and I will hurt men; for the rest o f my

time here on earth, I will hurt them. I will wander and I will

wail and I will break bottles to have shards o f glass I can hold in

m y hand so they cut both ways, instead o f knives, I’ll bleed

they will bleed both at the same time, the famous two-edged

sword, I will use them on curly-haired boys and I will keep on

after death and I will never stop because the pain will never

stop and you w on’t be able to erase me from these streets, I

will sweep down like lightning except it will be a streak o f

blood from the shard o f glass that cuts both ways, and I will

find one and he will bleed. I’ve got this living brain but my

body’s dead, w on’t move, it’s inert, paralyzed, couldn’t move

to save me or her but once I can move I will begin the search, I

will find her, my dog; without her, there’s no love. It’s as if I

drank some poison that’s killed my muscles so they can’t

m ove and time’s going by and I’m counting it, the minutes,

and I’m waiting, and m y heart is filling up with pain, suffering

is coming upon me; and remorse; because I did it, this awful

thing that made this awful loss. Then they’re there, him and

her, and she’s laughing and playing with her leash and he’s

smiling and happy and I’m thinking he’s beautiful, inside too,

in spirit, and I am near dying to touch him, I want to make real

love, arduous, infatuated love touched by his grace, and I’m

wondering what he will be like, naked and fine, intense, first

slow, now; and I reach for him and he pulls me up so I’m on

m y knees in front o f him and he’s standing on the mattress and

he takes his cock out and I’m thinking I’ll hold it and he wants

it in m y mouth and I’m thinking I will kiss it and lick it and

hold it in m y mouth and undress him as I do it and I’m

thinking how happy and fine this will be, slow, how stopped

in time and tender, he holds m y head still by m y hair and he

pushes his cock to the bottom o f m y throat, rams it in, past m y

throat, under it, deeper than the bottom, I feel this fracturing

pain as if m y neck shattered from inside and m y muscles were

torn apart ragged and fast, an explosion that ripped them like a

bomb went o ff or someone pushed a fist down m y throat but

fast, just rammed it down, and I feel surprise, this one second

o f complete surprise in which, without words, I want to know

the meaning o f this, his intention; there’s one second o f

awesome, shocking surprise and then I go under, it’s black,

there’s nothing, coma, death, complete black under the

ground or past life altogether in a region o f nothing without

shadows o f life or m em ory or dreams or fear or time, there’s

nothing, it’s perfect, cold, absolute nothing. When I wake up I

think I am dead. I begin to see the walls, barely, I barely see

them, and I see I’m in a room like the room I was in when I was

alive and I think this is what death is like, the same but yo u ’re

dead, the same but you stay here forever alone, the same walls

but you barely see them and the same place where you died,

the same body, but it’s not real, it’s not alive, it doesn’t feel

real, it’s cold and shadowy and yo u ’re there alone for all the

rest o f time cut o ff from the living and it’s empty, your d o g’s

not here in the room in death, in the cold, shaky, shadowy

room, it’s an imitation in shadows o f where you were but it’s

em pty o f her and you will be here alone forever, lonely for her,

there’s no puppies with the dead, no solace; you wake up and

you know yo u ’re dead; and alone. O nly m y eyes m ove but

they barely see, the walls look the same but I barely see them;

tim e’s nothing here; it stands still; it’s not changing, never;

yo u ’re like a m um m y but with m oving eyes scanning the

shadowy walls, but barely seeing them; and then the pain

comes; the astonishing pain, like someone skinned the inside

o f your throat, took a knife and lifted the skin o ff inside so it’s

raw, all blood, all torn, the muscles are ripped open, ragged,

stretched and pulled, you’re all ripped up inside as if you had

been torn apart inside and under your throat there’s a deep pain

as if it’s been deep cut, deep sliced, as if there’s some deadly

sickness down there, a contagion o f long-suffering death, an

awful illness, a soreness that verges on having all the nerves in

your body up under your throat and someone’s crushed

broken glass into them and there’s a physical anguish as if

someone poured gasoline down your throat and lit it; an

eternal fire; deep fire; deep pain. I felt the pain, and as the pain

got sharper and deeper and stronger and meaner, the walls got

clearer, I saw them clearer and they stayed still, and as the pain

got worse, crueler, I could feel the bed under me and m y old

drunk body and I figured out that I was probably alive and

time had passed and I must o f been out, in a coma,

unconscious, suspended in nothing except whatever’s cold

and black past actual life, and I couldn’t move and I wanted my

dog but I couldn’t call out for her or make any sound, even a

rasping sound, and I couldn’t raise m yself up to see where she

was although in m y mind I could see her all curled up in her

corner o f the room at the foot o f the mattress, being good,

being quiet, how she curled her head around to her tail and the

sweet, sad look on her face, how she’d just sit thinking with

her sweet, melancholy look and I hoped she’d come and lick

me and I wondered if she needed to be walked again yet but if

she did she’d be around me and I’d manage it, I swear I would,

and I wondered if she was hungry yet and I made a promise in

m y heart never to put her in danger with a stranger again, with

an unknown person, never to take a chance with her again, I

couldn’t understand what kind o f a man it was because it

wasn’t on m y map o f the world and I ain’t got a child’s map, did

he like it, to ram it down to kill me, a half second brutality o f

something o ff the map that didn’t even exist anywhere even

between men and wom en or with Nazis; and I don’t know if

he did other things, I can’t feel nothing or smell nothing, he

could have done anything, I don’t feel nothing near m y

vagina, I try to feel with m y fingers, if it’s wet, if it’s dirty, i f it

hurts, but everything’s numb except m y throat, the hurt o f it,

I’m thinking he could have done anything, fucked me or

masturbated on me or peed on me, I w ouldn’t know , I’m

feeling for semen or wet places with m y fingers but I can’t

m ove because m y throat can’t m ove or the pain implodes,

there can’t be a single tremor even, I can’t lift m yself up and I

know I’ll never know and I push it out o f m y mind, that I will

never know; I push it out and I am pulled under by the pain

because m y throat’s crushed into broken bits and it’s lit with

kerosene and the fire’s spreading up m y neck to m y brain, a

spreading field o f fire going up into m y cranial cavity and it’s

real fire, and probably the pain’s seeping out onto the floor and

spreading, it’s red and bloody or it’s orange and hot; penis

smashed me up; I fall back into the cold, black nothing,

grateful; and later I wake up, it’s night but I don’t know o f

what day except m y dog would’ve come by me, I’d remember

her by me, but I wake up and it’s hollow, m y life’s hollow, I

got an em pty life, I’m alive and it’s empty, she’s gone, I raise

m yself up on m y elbow and I look, I keep looking, there’s a

desolation beyond the burdens o f history, a sadness deeper

than any shame. I’ll take the physical pain, Lord, I deserve it,

double it, triple it, make it more, but bring her back, don’t let

him hurt her, don’t make her gone. I look, I keep looking, I

keep expecting her, that she will be there if I look hard enough

or God will hear me and the boy will walk through the door

saying he ju st walked her and I pray to just let him bring her

back, ju st let him walk in the door; ju st this; days could go by

and I w ouldn’t know ; he’ll be innocent in m y eyes, I swear. I

hallucinate her and I think she’s with me and I reach out and

she’s not real and then I fall back into the deep blackness and

when I wake up I look for her, I wait for her; I’m waiting for

her now. M y throat’s like some small animal nearly killed,

maimed for religious slaughter, a small, nearly killed beast, a

poor warm-blooded thing hurt by some ritual but I never

heard o f the religion, there’s deep sacrifice, deep pain. I can’t

move because the poor thing’d shake near to torture; it’s got to

stay still, the maimed thing. I couldn’t shout and I couldn’t cry

and I couldn’t whisper or moan or call her name, in sighs, I

couldn’t whisper to m yself in sighs. I couldn’t swallow or

breathe. I sat still in m y own shit for some long time, many,

many days, some months o f days, and I rocked, I rocked back

and forth on m y heels, I rocked and I held m yself in m y arms, I

didn’t move more than to rock and I didn’t wash and I didn’t

say nothing. I swallowed down some water as I could stand it,

I breathed when I could, not too much, not too soon, not too

hard. If he put semen on me it’s still there, I wear it, whatever

he did, if he did it I carry it whatever it is, I don’t know, I w on’t

ever know, whatever he did stays done, anything he tore stays

torn, anything he took stays gone. I look for her; I scan the

walls; I stare; I see; I know; I will make m yself into a weapon; I

will turn m yself into a new kind o f death, for them; I got a new

revolutionary love filling my heart; the real passion; the real

thing. Che didn’t know nothing, he was ruling class. Huey killed

a girl, a young prostitute, seventeen; he was pimping but she

wasn’t one o f his. He was cruising, slow, in a car. Baby, she

called out, baby, oh babe. He shot her; no one calls me baby. She

said baby; he said cunt. Some o f them whisper, a term o f

endearment; some o f them shout. There’s gestures more

eloquent than words. She said something, he said something,

she died. Sister child, lost heart, poor girl, I’ll avenge you, sister

o f m y heart. Did it hurt or was death the easy part? I don’t know

what m y one did, except for taking her; but it don’t matter,

really, does it? N ot what; nor why; nor who; nor how.

T E N

April 30, 1974

(Age 27)

Ma. Ssa. Da. Ma. Ssa. Da. Ma. Ssa. Da. Hear m y heart beat.

Massada. I was born there and I died there. There was time;

seventy years. The Je w s were there, the last ones, the last free

ones, seventy years. The zealots, they were called; m y folks,

m y tribe; how I love them in m y heart. N ever give in. N ever

surrender. Slavery is obscene. Die first. B y your ow n hand; if

that’s what it takes; rather than be conquered; die free. N o

shame for the women, they used to say; conquered women;

shame. Massada. I used to see this picture in m y mind, a

wom an on a rock. I wrote about her all the time. Every time I

tried to write a story I wrote there is a woman on a rock, even

in the eighth grade, there’s a woman, a strong woman, a fierce

wom an, on a rock. I didn’t know what happened in the story. I

couldn’t think o f a plot. I just saw her. She was proud. She was

strong. She was wild by our standards or so it seemed, as if

there was no other word; but she didn’t seem wild; because she

was calm; upright; with square shoulders, muscled; her eyes

were big and fearless and looked straight ahead; not like

wom en today, looking down. She was ancient, from an old

time, simple and stark, dirty and dark, austere, a proud,

unconquerable wom an on a rock. The rock towers. The rock

is barren; nothing grow s, nothing erodes, nothing changes; it

is hard and old and massive. The rock is vast. The rock is

majestic, high and bare and alone; so alone the sun nearly

weeps for it; isolated from man and God; unbreachable; a

towering wall o f bare rock, alone in a desert where the sun

makes the sand bleed. The sun is hot, pure, unmediated by

clouds or sky, a white sun; blinding white; no yellow; there’s a

naked rock under a steaming, naked sun, surrounded by

molten, naked sand. It’s a rock made to outlast the desert, a

bare and brazen rock; and the Dead Sea spreads out near it,

below it, touching the edge o f the desert that touches the edge

o f the rock. Dead rock; dead water; a hard land; for a hard

people; God kept killing us, o f course, to make us hard

enough; genocide and slavery and rape were paternal kindnesses designed to build character, to rip pity out o f you, to destroy sentimentality, your heart will be as barren as this rock

when I’m done with you, He said; stern Father, a nasty

Daddy, He made history an incest on His children, slow,

continuous, generation after generation, a sadistic pedagogy,

love and pain, what recourse does a child have? He loves you

with pain, by inflicting it on you, a slow, ardent lover, and you

love back with suffering because you are helpless and human,

an imprisoned child o f Him caged in the world o f His making;

it’s a worshipful response, filled with awe and fear and dread,

bewildered, w hy me, w hy now, w hy this, w hy aren’t Y ou

merciful, w hy aren’t Y ou kind; and because it’s all there is, this

love o f His, it’s the only love He made, the only love He lets us

know, ignorant children shut up in D addy’s house, we yearn

for Him and adore Him and wait for Him, awake, afraid,

shivering; we submit to Him, part fear, part infatuation,

helpless against Him, and we thank Him for the punishment

and the pain and say how it shows He loves us, we say Daddy,

Daddy, please, begging Him to stop but He takes it as

seduction, it eggs Him on, He sticks it in; please, Daddy. He

didn’t rest on the seventh day but He didn’t write it down

either, He made love, annihilation is how I will love them.

Y ou might say He had this thought. It was outside the plan.

The six days were the plan. On the seventh He stretched

H im self out to take a big snooze and a picture flashed through

His mind, a dirty picture, annihilation is how I will love them,

and it made everything w ork, it made everything hang

together: everything moved. It was like putting the tide in the

ocean. Instead o f a stagnant mass, a big puddle, there was this

monstrous, ruthless thing gliding backwards and forwards at

the same time and underneath the planet broke, there were

fissures and hurricanes and tornadoes and storms o f wind,

great, carnivorous storms; everything moved; moved and

died; moved, killed, and died. On the seventh day He made

love; annihilation is how I will love them; it was perfect and

Creation came alive animated by the nightmare o f His perfect

love; and He loved us best; o f all His children, we were the

chosen; D addy liked fucking us best. That Christ boy found

out; where are Y ou , w hy have Y o u forsaken me; common

questions asked by all the fucked children loved to death by

Daddy. At Massada we already knew what He wanted and

how He wanted it, He gloried in blood. We were His perfect

children; we made our hearts as bare and hard and empty as the

rock itself; good students, emblematic Jew s; pride was

prophecy. N early two thousand years later w e’d take Palestine

back, our hearts burned bare, a collective heart chastened by

the fire o f the crematoria; empty, hard. Pride, the euphemism

for the emotions that drove us to kill ourselves in a mass

suicide at Massada, the nationalist euphemism, was simple

obedience. We knew the meaning o f the H oly Books, the

stories o f His love, the narrative details o f His omnipresent

embrace; His wrath, orgasmic, a graphic, calculating

treachery. Freedom meant escape from Him; bolting into

death; a desperate, determined run from His tormenting love;

the Romans were His surrogates, the agents o f slavery and

rape, puppets on the divine string. It was the play within the

play; they too suffered; He loved them too; they too were

children o f God; He toyed with them too; but we were

D addy’s favorite girl. We had the holy scrolls; and a

synagogue that faced towards Jerusalem, His city, cruel as is

befitting; perpetual murder, as is befitting. The suicide at

Massada was us, His best children, formed by His perfect

love, surrendering: to Him. Annihilation is how I will love

them; He loved loving; the freedom for us was the end o f the

affair, finally dead. Yeah, we defied the Romans, a righteous

suicide it seemed; but that was barely the point; we weren’t

prepared to have them on top, we belonged to Him.

Everything was hidden under the floor o f a cell that we had

sealed off; to protect the holy scrolls from Roman desecration;

to protect the synagogue from Roman desecration; we kept

His artifacts pure and hidden, the signs and symbols o f His

love; we died, staying faithful; only Daddy gets to hurt us bad;

only Daddy gets to put His thing there. First we burned

everything we had, food, clothes, everything; we gathered it

all and we burned it. Then ten men were picked by lot and they

slit the throats o f everyone else. Then one man was chosen by

lot and he slit the throats o f the other nine, then his own. I have

no doubt that he did. There were nearly a thousand o f us; nine

hundred and sixty; men, women, children; proud; obedient to

God. There was discipline and calm, a sadness, a quiet

patience, a tense but quiet waiting for slaughter, like at night,

how a child stays awake, waiting, there is a stunning courage,

she does not run, she does not die o f fear. Some were afraid

and they were held down and forced, o f course; it had to be. It

was by family, mostly. A husband lay with his wife and

children, restrained them, their throats were slit first, then his,

he held them down, tenderly or not, and then he bared his

throat, deluded, thinking it was manly, and there was blood,

the w ay God likes it. There were some w idow s, some

orphans, some lone folks you didn’t especially notice on a

regular day; but that night they stood out; the men with the

swords did them first. It took a long time, it’s hard to kill nearly

a thousand people one by one, by hand, and they had to hurry

because it had to be done before dawn, you can do anything in

the dark but dawn comes and it’s hard to look at love in the

light. We loved God and we loved freedom, we were all G o d ’s

girls you might say and freedom, then as now, was in getting

sliced; a perfect penetration, then death; a voluptuous compliance, blood, death. I f yo u ’re G o d ’s girl you do it the w ay He likes it and H e’s got special tastes; the naked throat and the

thing that tears it open, He likes one clean cut, a sharp, clean

blade; you lay yourself down and the blade cuts into you and

there’s blood and pain; and the eyes, there’s a naked terror in

the eyes and death freezes it there, yo u ’ve seen the eyes. The

blood is warm and it spreads down over you and you feel its

heat, you feel the heat spreading. Freedom isn’t abstract, an

idea, it’s concrete, in life, a sliced throat, a clean blade,

freedom now. G o d ’s girl surrenders and finds freedom where

the men always bragged it was; in blood and death; only they

didn’t expect it to be this w ay, them on their backs too, supine,

girlish; G o d ’s the man here. There’s an esthetic to it too, o f

course: the bodies in voluntary repose, waiting; the big knife,

slicing; the rich, textured beauty o f the anguish against the

amorphous simplicity o f the blood; the emotions disciplined

to submission as murder comes nearer, the blood o f someone

covers your arm or your shoulder or your hand and the glint o f

the blade passes in front o f your eyes and you push your head

back to bare your throat, slow ly so that you will live longer

but it looks sensual and lewd and filled with longing, and he

cuts and you feel the heat spreading, your body cools fast,

before you die, and you feel the heat o f your own blood

spreading. Was Sade God? M aybe I was just seventy; I was

born on the rock but the adults who raised me were new to it

and awkward, not native to the rock, still with roots down

below, on softer ground; I died there, a tough one, old, tough

skin from the awful sun, thick and leathery, with deep furrow s

like dried up streams going up my legs and up my arms and

creasing m y face, scarified you might say from the sun eating

up m y skin, cutting into it with white hot light, ritual scars or a

surgeon’s knife, terrible, deep rivers in my skin, dried out

rivers; and maybe I’d had all the men, religion notwithstanding, men are always the same, filled with God and Law but still

sticking it in so long as it’s dark and fast; no place on earth

darker than Massada at night; no boys on earth faster than the

Jew s; nice boys they were, too, scholars with the hearts o f

assassins. Beware o f religious scholars who learn to fight.

T h ey’ve been studying the morals o f a genocidal God. Shrewd

and ruthless, smart and cruel, they will win; tell me, did

Massada ever die and where are the Romans now; profiles on

coins in museums. A scholar who kills considers the long

view; will the dead survive in every tear the living shed? A

scholar knows how it will look in writing; beyond the death

count o f the moment. Regular soldiers who fight to kill don’t

stand a chance. The corpses o f all sides get maggots and turn to

dust; but some stories live forever, pristine, in the hidden

heart. They prayed, the Jew ish boys, they made forays down

the rock to fight the Romans until the military strength o f the

Romans around the rock was unassailable, they took a little

extra on the side when they could get it, like all men. I

probably had m y eye on the younger ones, twenty, virile,

new, they had no m emory o f being Jew s down on the low

ground, they had only this austere existence, they were born

here o f parents who were born here o f parents who either were

born here or came here young and lived their adult years on

this rock. Sometimes Jew s escaped the Romans and got here,

made it to the top; but they didn’t bring profane ideas; they

stripped themselves o f the foreign culture, the habits o f the

invaders; they told us stories o f Roman barbarism, which

convinced us even more; down below the Romans were pigs

rolling in shit, above we were the people o f God. N o one here

doubted it, especially not the young men; they were pure,

glow ing, vibrant animals lit up by a nationalism that enhanced

their physical beauty, it was a single-minded strength. There

were no distracting, tantalizing memories o f before, below.

We lived without the tumult o f social heterodoxy, there was

no cultural relativism as it were. The young men were hard,

cold animals, full o f self-referential pride; they had no

ambivalence, no doubt; they had true grit and were incapable

o f remorse; they lived in a small, contained world, geographically limited, flat, all the same, barren, culturally

dogmatic, they had a few facts, they learned dogma by rote, it

was a closed system, they had no need for introspection, there

were no moral dilemmas that confronted them, troubled

them, pulled them apart inside; they were strong, they fought,

they prayed but it was a form o f nationalism, they learned

racial pride, they had the thighs o f warriors, not scholars, and

they used them on women, not Romans, it was the common

kind o f killing, man on girl, as i f by being Jew s alone on this

desolate rock, isolated here, they were, finally, like everyone

else, all the other men, ordinary, like Romans, for instance;

making war on us, brutal and quick if not violent, but they

beat women too, the truth, finally, they did. The sacred was

remote from them except as a source o f national pride; pure

Je w s on a purely Jew ish rock they had a pure God o f the Jew s,

His laws, H oly Books, the artifacts o f a pure and superior

nation. The rock was barren and empty and soon it would be a

cemetery and the bloodletting would become a story; nearly

fiction, nearly a lie; abridged, condensed, cleaned up; as if

killing nine hundred and sixty people, men, women, and

children, by slicing their throats was an easy thing, neat and

clean, simple and quiet; as if there was no sex in it and no

meanness; as if no one was forced, held down, shut up; well,

frankly, murdered; as i f no one was murdered; as if it was

noble and perfect, a bloodless death, a murderless murder, a

mass suicide with universal consent, except for the women

and the children; except for them. Y ou get sad, if you

understand. The men were purely male, noble and perfect, in

behalf o f all the Jew s; the young ones especially, strong

animals, real men, prideful men, physically perfect specimens

dark and icy with glistening thighs, ideologically pure,

racially proud, idealists with racial pride; pure, perfect,

uncorrupted nationalists; beautiful fascists; cold killing boys;

until God, ever wise, ever vicious, turned them into girls. I

was probably an old woman making a fool o f herself with

memories and desires, all the natural grace and learned artifice

o f young women burned away by wear and tear and the awful,

hot sun. Still, sometimes you’d like to feel one o f the young

ones against you, a last time, one last time; nasty, brutish,

short. It’s a dumb nostalgia. They never were very good, not

the fathers, not the sons. O r maybe I was some sentimental old

fool w h o ’d always been a faithful wife, except once, I was

lonely and he was urgent, and I had a dozen grandchildren so

this rock knew m y blood already, I had labored here, and now

I sat, old, under the sun, and m y brain got heated with

foresight and grief and I saw them as they soon would be,

corpses with their throats slit, and maybe I howled in pain, an

animal sound, or I denounced them in real words, and the

young men said she’s an old fool, she’s an old idiot, she’s

loony, ignore her, it’s nonsense, and I tried to tell the girls and

the children how they’d be killed soon, with the awful slice

across the throat; these are fanatic boys, I said, driven by an

idea, I said, it is murder, not suicide, what they will do to you;

and they asked if it was the will o f God and o f course now I see

w hy you must lie but I said yes, it’s His will, always, that we

should suffer and die, the will o f God is wrong, I said, we have

to defy the will o f God, we have to defy the Romans and the

Je w s and the will o f God, we have to find a w ay to live, us, you

see, us; she’s loony, they said; you’ll be stretched out, I said,

beautiful and young, too soon, dressed and ornamented, and

your throats will be naked as if your husbands are going to use

your mouths but it will be a sword this time, a real one, not his

obscene bragging, one clean cut, and there will be blood, the

w ay God likes. I didn’t want to see the children die and I was

tired o f God. Enough, I said to Him; enough. I didn’t want to

see the wom en die either, the girls who came after me, you get

old and you see them different, you see how sad their

obedience is, how pitiful; you see them whole and human,

how they could be; you see them chipped aw ay at, broken bit

by bit, slowed down, constrained; tamed; docile; bearing the

weight o f invisible chains; you see it is terrible that they obey

these men, love these men, serve these men, who, like their

God, ruin whatever they touch; don’t believe, I say, don’t

obey, don’t love, let him put the sword in your hand, little

sister, let Him put the sword in your hand; then see. Let him

bare his throat to you; then see. The day before it happened I

quieted down, I didn’t howl, I didn’t rant or rave, I didn’t

want them to lock me up, I wanted to stay out on the rock,

under the hot sun, the hot, white sun; m y companion, the

burning sun. I was an old woman, wild, tough, proud, strong,

illiterate, ah, yes, the people o f the Book, except for the

women and girls, God says it’s forbidden for us, the Book,

illiterate but I wanted to write it down today, quiet, in silence,

not to have to howl but to curl up and make the signs on the

page, to say this is what I know, this is what has happened

here, but I couldn’t write, or read; I was an old woman, tough,

proud, strong, fierce, quiet now as if dumb, a thick quiet, an

intense, disciplined quiet; I was an old woman, wild, tough,

proud, with square shoulders muscled from carrying, from

hard labor, sitting on a rock, a hard, barren rock, a terrible

rock; there was a wom an sitting on a rock, she was strong, she

was fierce, she was wild, she wasn’t afraid, she looked straight

ahead, not down like wom en now , she was dark and dirty,

maybe mad, maybe just old, near naked with rags covering

her, her hair was long and shining and dirty, a gleaming silver

under the hot, white sun; but wild is perhaps not the right

word because she was calm, upright, quiet, in intentional

solitude, her eyes were big and fearless and she faced the world

head-on not averting her eyes the w ay women do now; she

could see; she didn’t turn her eyes away. She was sitting on a

hard, barren rock under a hot, white sun, and then the sun

went down, got lower in the sky, lower and lower yet, a little

lower; the sun got lower and the light got paler, then duller;

the sun got low and she took a piece o f rock, a sharp piece o f

rock, and she cut her throat; I cut my throat. N o Romans; no

fascist Jew ish boys however splendid their thighs or pristine

their ideals; no. Mine was a righteous suicide; a political refusal

to sanction the current order; to say black was white. Theirs

was mass murder. A child can’t commit suicide. You have to

murder a child. I couldn’t watch the children killed; I couldn’t

watch the women taken one last time; throats bared; heads

thrown back, or pushed back, or pulled back; a man gets on

top, who knows what happens next, any time can be the last

time, slow murder or fast, slow rape or fast, eventual death, a

surprise or you are waiting with a welcome, an open

invitation; rape leading, inexorably, to death; on a bare rock,

invasion, blood, and death. Massada; hear my heart beat; hear

me; the women and children were murdered, except me, I was

not, when you say Massada you say m y name, I discovered

pride there, I outlined freedom, out from under, Him and him

and him; let him put the sword in your hand, little sister, then

see; don’t love them; don’t obey. It wasn’t delirium; or fear; I

saw freedom. Does Massada thrill you, do you weep with

pride and sorrow for the honor o f the heroes, the so-called

suicides? Then you weep for me, I make you proud, the

woman on the rock; a pioneer o f freedom; a beginning; for

those who had no say but their throats were ripped open; for

the illiterate in invisible chains; a righteous suicide; a resistance

suicide; mad woman; mad-dog suicide; this girl here’s got a

ripped throat, Andrea, the zealot, freedom is the theory,

suicide the practice; m y story begins at Massada, I begin there,

I see a woman on a rock and I was born in blood, the blood

from her throat carried by time; I was born in blood, the slit

between the legs, the one God did H im self so it bleeds forever,

one clean cut, a perfect penetration, the m emory o f Massada

marked on me, my covenant with her; God sliced me, a

perfect penetration, then left me like carrion for the others, the

ones He made like Him, in His own image as they always say,

as they claim with pride, or vanity I would say, or greed; pride

is me, deciding at Massada, not Him or him or him. Y o u ’re

born in blood, washed in it, you swim out in it, immersed in

it, it’s your first skin, warm , hot on fragile, wrinkled,

discolored flesh; w e’re born to bleed, the ones He sliced

Himself; when the boys come out, the toy boys, tiny figurines

made like Him, He has it done to them, sym bolically, the

penis is sliced so they’re girls to Him; and the toy b o y’ll grow

up pushing the cut thing in girls who are born cut open big,

he’ll need to stick it in and stick it in and stick it in, he doesn’t

like being one o f G o d ’s girls even a little; and it’s a m em ory,

isn’t it, you were girls to M e at Massada; a humiliation; think

o f the last ten, nine o f them on their big knees, throats bared,

one slice, the tenth sticks it up himself, there’s a woman I saw

in a porn magazine, she did that to herself, she smiled; did

number ten, the big hero, smile, a coy look at God, heavy

mascara around the eyes, a wide smile, the sword going in and

som ehow he fingers his crotch at the same time? The

Christians w ouldn’t stand for it; they said C hrist’s the last one,

he died for us so we don’t need to be cut but God wants them

sliced and they know it so they do it for health or sanitation as

if it’s secular garbage removal but in their hearts they know ,

God wants them cut, you don’t get aw ay with not being a girl

for Him except you w on’t be His favorite girl. They take it out

on us, all o f them, sliced or threatened, sliced or evading it,

enlisted or the equivalent o f draft dodgers; manly men;

fucking the hole God already made; He was there first; there

are no virgin girls; the toy boys always get used goods. Their

thing, little next to His, aspires to omnipresence; and Daddy

watches; a perpetual pornography; blood-and-guts scenes o f

pushing and hitting and humiliation, the girl on the bed, the

girl on the floor, the girl in the kitchen, the girl in the car, the

girl down by the river, the girl in the woods, the girls in cities

and towns, prairies and deserts, mountains and plains, all

colors, a rainbow o f suffering, rich and poor, sick and well,

young and old, infants even, a man sticks it in the mouths o f

infants, I know such a man; oh, he’s real; an uncle o f mine; an

adult; look up to him, listen to him, obey him, love him, he’s

your uncle; he was born in Camden but he left, smart, a big

man, he got rich and prominent, an outstanding citizen; five

infants, in the throat, men like the throat, his own children, it

was a daddy’s love, he did that, a loving daddy in the dark, and

God watched, they like the throat, the smooth cavity o f an

infant’s mouth and the tiny throat, a tight passage, men like it

tight, so tiny; and the suction, because an infant sucks, it pulls

and it sucks, it wants food but this food’s too big, too

monstrous, it sucks, it pulls it in, and daddy says to him self it

wouldn’t suck if it didn’t like it; and Daddy watches; and the

infant gags, and the infant retches, and the infant chokes; and

daddy comes; and Daddy comes; the child vomits, chokes,

panics, can’t breathe, forever, a lifetime on the verge o f

suffocation. I don’t have much o f a family, I prefer the streets

frankly to various pieties but sometimes there are these shrieks

in the night, a child quaking from a crime against humanity,

and she calls out, sister she says, he sliced m y throat with a

sword, I remember it but I don’t, it happened but it didn’t, he’s

there in the dark all the time, watching, waiting, he’s a ghost

but he isn’t, it’s a secret but w hy doesn’t everyone know? H ow

does an infant get out from under, Him and him; him; oh, he

does it for a long time, it begins in the crib, then she crawls, a

baby girl and all the relatives go ooh and ah and the proud papa

beams, every night, for years, until the next one is born, two

years, three years, four years, he abandons the child for the

next infant, he likes infants, tiny throat, tight suction,

helpless, tiny, cute thing that seems to spasm whole, you

know how infants crinkle all up, their tiny arms and their tiny

legs, they just all bunch up, one m oving sex part in spasm with

a tight, smooth, warm cavity for his penis, it’s a tiny throat,

and the infant sucks hard, pulls the thing in. Years later there

are small suicides, a long, desperate series o f small suicides,

she’s empty inside except for shadows and dread, sick with

debilitating illnesses, no one knows the cause or the cure, she

chokes, she gags, she vom its, she can’t sw allow; there’s

asthma, anxiety, the nights are saturated with a menace that

feels real, specific, concrete, but you can’t find it when you

turn on the light; and eventually, one day or some day, none o f

us can sw allow ; we choke; we gag; we can’t stop them; they

get in the throat, deep enough in, artists o f torment; a manly

invasion; taking a part God didn’t use first. If yo u ’re adult

before they rape you there yo u ’ve got all the luck; all the luck

there is. The infants; are haunted; by familiar rapists; someone

close; someone known; but who; and there’s the disquieting

certainty that one loves him; loves him. There are these

wom en— such fine women— such beautiful women— smart

women, fine women, quiet, compassionate wom en— and

they want to die; all their lives they have wanted to die; death

would solve it; numb the pain that comes from nowhere but

somewhere; they live in rooms; haunted; by a familiar rapist;

they whisper daddy; daddy, daddy, please; asleep or awake

they want to die, there’s a rapist in the room, the figure o f a

man invading, spectral, supernatural, real but not real, present

but not there; he’s invading; he’s a crushing, smothering

adversary; it’s some fucking middle-class bedroom in some

fucking suburb, there aren’t invading armies here but there’s

invasion, a man advancing on sleeping children, his own;

annihilation is how I will love them; they die in pieces inside;

usually their bodies survive; not always, o f course; you want

God to help them but God w on’t help them, He’s on the other

side; there are sides; the suicides are long and slow, not

righteous, not mass but so lonely, so alone; could we gather up

all the women who were the little girls who were the infants

and say do it now, end it now, one time, here; say it was you;

say it happened to you; name names; say his name; we will

have a Massada for girls, a righteous mass suicide, we could

have it on any street corner, cement, bare, hard, empty; but

they’re alone, prisoners in the room with the rapist even after

he’s gone; five infants, uncle; it makes Auschwitz look small,

uncle; deep throat, my uncle invented deep throat, a fine,

upstanding man. I can do the arithmetic; five equals six

million; uncle pig; uncle good Jew ; uncle upstanding citizen;

uncle killer fucking pig; but we have a heroic tradition o f

slaughtering children in the throat; feel the pride. I’ll gather

them up and show you a righteous suicide; in Camden; home;

bare, hard, empty cement, hard, gray cement, cement spread

out like desert rock, cement under a darker sun, a brooding

sun, a bloody sun, covered over, burgundy melting, a wash o f

blood over it; even the sun can’t watch anymore. There were

brick houses the color o f blood; on hard, gray rock; we come

from there, uncle, you and I, you before me, the adult; you

raped your babies in pretty houses, rich rooms; escaped the

cement; they threw me down on the cement and took me from

behind; but I’ll bet you never touched a girl when you were a

homeboy, slob; too big for you, even then, near your own

size; w e’ll have Massada in Camden, a desolate city, empty

and bare and hard as a rock; and I will have the sword in m y

hand and I will kill you myself; you will get down on your big

knees and you will bare your throat and I will slice it; a suicide;

he killed himself, the w ay they did at Massada; only this time a

girl had the sword; and it was against God, not to placate Him.

Every bare, empty, hard place spawns a you, uncle, and a me;

homeboy, there’s me and you. The shit escaped; into death;

the shit ran away; died; escaped to the safe place for bandits,

the final hideaway where God the Father protects His gang;

they watch together now, Father and His boy, a prodigal son,

known in the world o f business for being inventive, a genius

o f sorts, known among infants as a genius; o f torment;

destruction; and I’m the avenging angel, they picked me, the

infants grew up and they picked me; they knew it would take a

Camden girl to beat a homeboy; you had to know the cement,

the bare, em pty rock; he was a skeleton when he died, illness

devoured him but it w asn’t enough, how could it be enough,

w hat’s enough for the Him mler o f the throat? I know how to

kill them; I think them dead for a long time; I make them waste

away; for a long time; I don’t have to touch them; I ju st have to

know who they are; uncle, the infants told me; I knew. I was

born in Camden in 1946 down the street from Walt Whitman,

an innocent boy, a dreamer, one o f G o d ’s sillier creatures, put

on earth as a diversion, a kind o f decoy, kind o f a lyrical phony

front in a covert war, a clever trick by rape’s best strategist, he

had G od-given talent for G od-given propaganda; the poet

says love; as command; the w ay others say sit to a dog; love,

children, love; or love children; the poet advocates universal

passion; as command; no limits; no rightful disdain; humanity

itself surges, there is a sweep o f humanity, we are waves o f

ecstasy, the common man, and woman, when he remembers

to add her; embrace the common man; we are a human fam ily

consecrated to love, each individual an imperial presence in the

climactic collective, a sovereign unto himself; touch each

other, without fear, and he, Walt, w ill touch everyone; every

one o f us; we all get loved by him, rolled up in him, rolled over

by him; his thighs embrace us; he births us and he fucks us, a

patriarch’s vision, we take him in our mouths, grateful; he

used words to paint great dreams, visionary wet dreams,

dem ocracy’s wet dreams; for the worker and the whore; each

and all loved by him; and in his stead, as he’s busy writing

poems, all these others, the common men, push it in and

come; I loved him, the words, the dreams; don’t believe them,

don’t love them, don’t obey the program written into the

poem, a series o f orders from the high commander o f pain;

bare the throat, spread the legs, suck the thing; only he was

shy, a nineteenth-century man, they didn’t say it outright

then; he said he wanted everyone, to have them, in the poems;

he wanted to stick it in everywhere; and be held too, the lover

who needs you, your compassion, a hint o f recognition from

you, a tenderness from your heart, personal and singular; the

pitiful readers celebrate the lyric and practice the program, the

underlying communication, the orders couched in language as

orgasmic as the acts he didn’t specifically say; he was lover,

demanding lover, and father; he spread his seed everywhere,

over continents; as i f his ejaculation were the essence o f love; as

i f he reproduced him self each time; with his hand he made

giants; as if we all were his creatures; as i f his sperm had

washed over the whole world and he begat us, and now he’d

take us; another maniac patriarch, a chip o ff the old block; the

epic drama o f a vast possession as i f it were an orgy o f

brotherly love, kind, tender, fraternite; as if taking everyone

were gentle, virile but magnanimous, a charity from body to

body, soul to soul; none were exempt, he was the poet o f

inclusion; you could learn there were no limits, though you

might not know the meaning until after they had touched you,

all o f them, his magnificent masses, each one; you could stay

as innocent, or nearly, as the great, gray poet himself, until

yo u ’d done the program; then you’d be garbage somewhere,

your body literal trash, without the dignity o f a body bag,

something thrown out, dumped somewhere, sticky from

sperm, ripped inside, a torn anus, vaginal bruises and tears, a

ripped throat; the tissue is torn; there’s trauma to the tissue,

says the doctor, detached, not particularly interested; but the

tissue is flesh, o f a human, and the trauma is injury, o f a

human, the delicate lining o f the vagina is flesh, the interior

lining o f the throat is flesh, not meant for invasion, assault;

flesh lines the anus; it’s already limned with cracks and

bleeding sores; mortal fools bleed there, we are dying all the

time; lo ve’s intense and there will be great, jagged rips, a

searing pain, it burns, it bleeds, there are fistfuls o f blood,

valleys o f injury too wide and too deep to heal, and the shit

comes out, like a child, bathed in blood, and there’s fire, the

penis pushed in hard all at once for the sake o f the pain, because

the lover, he likes it; annihilation is how I will love them.

Y o u ’ll just be loved to death, tears, like cuts, and tears, the

w atery things; it wasn’t called the C ivil War, or Vietnam; it

w asn’t a w ar poets decried in lyrics apocalyptic or austere,

they couldn’t ever see the death, or the wounded soldier, or

the evil o f invasion, a genocidal policy if I remember right, it’s

hard to remember; love’s celebrated; it’s party time; hang

them from the rafters, the loved ones, pieces o f meat, nice and

raw, after the dogs have had them, clawed them to pieces,

chewed on their bones; bloody, dirty pieces strung out on

street corners or locked up in the rapist’s house. One whole

human being was never lost in all o f history or all o f time; or

not so a poet could see it or use fine words to say it. Walt sings;

to cover up the crimes; say it’s love enough; enough. And art’s

an alibi; I didn’t do it, I’m an artist; or I did do it but it’s art,

because I’m an artist, we do art, not rape, I did it beautiful, I

arranged the pieces so esthetic, so divine; and them that love

art also did not do it; I support art. Walt could sing, all right;

obscuring a formal truth; as if a wom an had an analogous

throat; for song; then they stuff it down; sing then darling.

The poems were formal lies; lies o f form; bedrock lies; as if the

throat, pure but incarnate, was for singing in this universal

humanity we have here, this democracy o f love, for one and

all; but they stuff it down; then try singing; sing, Amerika,

sing. I saw this Lovelace girl. I’m walking in Times Square,

going through the trash cans for food; I roam now, every day,

all the time, days, nights, I don’t need sleep, I don’t ever sleep;

I’m there, digging through the slop for some edible things but

not vegetables because I never liked vegetables and there’s

standards you have to keep, as to your own particular tastes. I

am searching for my dog, my precious friend, on every city

street, in every alley, in every hole they got here where usually

there’s people, in every shooting gallery, in every pim p’s

hallway, in every abandoned building in this city, I am

searching, because she is my precious friend; but so far I have

not found her; it’s a quest I am on, like in fables and stories,

seeking her; and if m y heart is pure I will find her; I remember

Gawain and Galahad and I try to survive the many trials

necessary before finding her and I am hoping she wasn’t taken

to wicked, evil ones; that she’s protected by some good magic

so she w on ’t be hurt or malnourished or used bad, treated

mean, locked up or starved or kicked; I’m hoping there’s a

person, half magic, who will have regard for her; and after I’ve

done all the trials and tribulations she will come to me in a dark

wood. I’ve got pain, in m y throat, some boy tore it up, I rasp, I

barely talk, it’s an ugly sound, some boy killed it, as if it were

some small animal he had to maim to death, an enemy he had

to kill by a special method, you rip it up and it bleeds and the

small thing dies slow. It’s a small, tight passage, good for fun,

they like it because it’s tight, it hugs the penis, there’s no give,

the muscles don’t stretch, at some point the muscles tear, and

it must be spectacular, when they rip; then he’d come; then

he’d run. Y ou couldn’t push a baby through, like with the

vagina; though they’d probably think it’d be good for a laugh;

have some slasher do a cesarean; like with this Lovelace girl,

where they made a jo k e with her, as if the clit is in her throat

and they keep pushing penises in to find it so she can have an

orgasm; it’s for her, o f course; always for her; a joke; but a

friendly one; for her; so she can have a good time; I went in,

and I saw them ram it down; big men; banging; you know,

mean shoving; I don’t know w hy she ain’t dead. They kept her

smiling; i f it’s a film you have to smile; I wanted to see if it

hurt, like with me; she smiled; but with film they edit, you

know, like in H ollyw ood. She had black and blue marks all

over her legs and her thighs, big ones, and she smiled; I don’t

know w hy we always smile; I m yself smile; I can remember

smiling, like the smile on a skeleton; you don’t ever want them

to think they did nothing wrong so you smile or you don’t

want them to think there’s something w rong with you so you

smile, because there’s likely to be some kind o f pain coming

after you if there’s something w rong with you, they hit you to

make it right, or you want them to be pleased so you smile or

you want them to leave so you smile or you just are crapping

in your pants afraid so you smile and even after you shit from

fear you keep smiling; they film it, you smile. Sometimes a

man still offers me money, I laugh, a hoarse, ugly laugh, quite

mad, m y throat’s in ribbons, just hanging streaks o f meat, you

can feel it all loose, all cut loose or ripped loose in pieces as if

it’s kind o f like pieces o f steak cut to be sauteed but someone

forgot and left it out so there’s maggots on it and it’s green,

rotted out, all crawling. Some one o f them offers me money

and I make him sorry, I prefer the garbage in the trash cans,

frankly, it’s cleaner, this walking human stuff I don’t have no

room in m y heart for, they’re not hygenic. I’m old, pretty old,

I can’t take the chance o f getting cancer or something from

them; I think they give it to you with how they look at you; so

I hide the best I can, under newspapers or under coats or under

trash I pick up; m y hair’s silver, dirty; I remember when I was

different and these legs were silk; and m y breasts were silk; but

now there’s sores; and blood; and scars; and I’m green inside

sometimes, if I cut m yself something green comes out, as if

I’m getting green blood which I never heard o f before but they

keep things from you; it could be that if you get so many bad

cuts body and soul your blood changes; from scarlet to a dank

green, an awful green; some chartreuse, some Irish, but

mostly it is morbid, a rotting green; it’s a sad story as I am an

old-fashioned human being who had a few dreams; I liked

books and I would have enjoyed a cup o f coffee with Camus in

m y younger days, at a cafe in Paris, outside, w e’d watch the

people walk by, and I would have explained that his ideas

about suicide were in some sense naive, ahistorical, that no

philosopher could afford to ignore incest, or, as I would have

it, the story o f man, and remain credible; I wanted a pretty

whisper, by which I mean a lover’s whisper, by which I mean

that I could say sweet things in a man’s ear and he’d be thrilled

and kind, I’d whisper and it’d be like making love, an embrace

that would chill his blood and boil it, his skin’d be wild, all

nerves, all smitten, it’d be my mark on him, a gentle mark but

no one’d match it, just one whisper, the kind that makes you

shiver body and soul, and it’d just brush over his ear. I wanted

hips you could balance the weight o f the world on, and I’d

shake and it’d move; in Tanzania it’d rumble. I wanted some

words; o f beauty; o f power; o f truth; simple words; ones you

could write down; to say some things that happened, in a

simple way; but the words didn’t exist, and I couldn’t make

them up, or I wasn’t smart enough to find them, or the parts o f

them I had or I found got tangled up, because I couldn’t

remember, a lot disappeared, you’d figure it would be

impressed on you if it was bad enough or hard enough but if

there’s nothing but fire it’s hard to remember some particular

flame on some particular day; and I lived in fire, the element; a

Dresden, metaphysically speaking; a condition; a circum-

stance; in time, tangential to space; I stepped out, into fire. Fire

burns m em ory clean; or the heart; it burns the heart clean; or

there’s scorched earth, a dead geography, burned bare; I

stepped out, into fire, or its aftermath; burnt earth; a dry, hard

place. I was born in blood and I stepped out, into fire; and I

burned; a girl, burning; the flesh becomes translucent and the

bones show through the fire. The cement was hot, as if flames

grew in it, trees o f fire; it was hot where they threw you down;

hot and orange; how am I supposed to remember which flame,

on which day, or what his name was, or how he did it, or what

he said, or w hy, if I ever knew; I don’t remember knowing.

O r even if, at some point; really, even if. I lived in urban flame.

There was the flat earth, for us gray, hard, cement; and it

burned. I saw pictures o f woods in books; we had great flames

stretching up into the sky and swaying; m oving; dancing; the

heat melting the air; we had burning hearts and arid hearts;

girls’ bodies, burning; boys, hot, chasing us through the forest

o f flame, pushing us down; and we burned. Then there were

surreal flames, the ones we superimposed on reality, the

atomic flames on the way, coming soon, at a theater near you,

the dread fire that could never be put out once it was ignited; I

saw it, simple, in front o f m y eyes, there never was a chance, I

lived in the flames and the flames were a ghostly wash o f

orange and red, as i f an eternal fire mixed with blood were the

paint, and a great storm the brush. I lived in the ordinary fire,

whatever made them follow you and push you down, yo u ’d

feel the heat, searing, you didn’t need to see the flame, it was

more as if he had orange and burning hands a mile high; I

burned; the skin peeled off; it deformed you. The fire boils

you; you melt and blister; then I’d try to write it down, the

flames leaping o ff the cement, the embodiment o f the lover;

but I didn’t know what to call it; and it hurt; but past what they

will let you say; any o f them. I didn’t know what to call it, I

couldn’t find the words; and there were always adults saying

no, there is no fire, and no, there are no flames; and asking the

life-or-death question, you’re still a virgin, aren’t you; which

you would be forever, poor fool, in your pitiful pure heart.

Y ou couldn’t tell them about the flames that were lit on your

back by vandal lover boys, arsonists, while they held you

down; and there were other flames; the adults said not to

watch; but I watched; and the flames stayed with me, burning

in m y brain, a fire there, forever, I lived with the flames my

whole life; the Buddhist monks in Vietnam who burned

themselves alive; they set themselves on fire; to protest; they

were calm; they sat themselves down, calm; they were simple,

plain; they never showed any fear or hesitation; they were

solemn; they said a prayer; they had kerosene; then they were

lit; then they exploded; into flame; and they burned forever; in

my heart; forever; past what television could show; in its gray;

in its black and white and gray; the gray cement o f gray

Saigon; the gray robes o f a gray man, a Buddhist; the gray fire,

consuming him; I don’t need to close my eyes to see them; I

could reach out to touch them, without even closing my eyes;

the television went off, or the adults turned it off, but you

knew they were still burning, now, later, hours, days, the

ashes would smolder, the fire’d never go out, because if it has

happened it has happened; it has happened always and forever.

The gray fire would die down and the gray monk would be

charred and skeletal, dead, they’d remove him like so much

garbage, but the fire’d stay, low along the ground, the gray

fire would spread, low along the ground, in gray Saigon; in

gray Camden. The flames would stay low and gray and they

would burn; an eternal fire; its meaning entrusted to a child for

keeping. I think they stayed calm inside the fire; burning; I

think they stayed quiet; I mourned them; I grieved for them; I

felt some shadow o f the pain; maybe there was no calm;

maybe they shrieked; maybe it was an agony obscene even to

God; imagine. I’d go to school on just some regular day and

it’d happen; at night, on the news, they’d show it; the gray

picture; a Buddhist in flames; because he didn’t like the

government in Vietnam; because the United States was

hurting Vietnam; we tormented them. Y o u ’d see a plain street

in Saigon and suddenly a figure would ignite; a quiet, calm

figure, simple, in simple robes, rags almost; a plain, simple

man. It was a protest, a chosen immolation, a decision,

planned for; he burned him self to say there were no words; to

tell me there were no words; he wanted me to know that in

Vietnam there was an agony against which this agony, self-

immolation, was nothing, meaningless, minor; he wanted me

to know; and I know; he wanted me to remember; and I

remember. He wanted the flames to reach me; he wanted the

heat to graze me; he wanted this self-immolation, a pain past

words, to communicate: you devastate us here, a pain past

words. The Buddhists didn’t want to fight or to hurt someone

else; so they killed themselves; in w ays unbearable to watch; to

say that this was some small part o f the pain we caused, some

small measure o f the pain we made; an anguish to communicate anguish. Years later I was grow n, or nearly so, and there was Norm an M orrison, some man, a regular man, ordinary,

and he walked to the front o f the White House, as close as he

could get, a normal looking citizen, and he poured gasoline all

over him self and he lit it and the police couldn’t stop him or get

near him, he was a pillar o f fire, and he died, slow, in fire,

because the war was w rong and words weren’t helping, and he

said we have to show them so he showed them; he said this is

the anguish I will undergo to show you the anguish there,

there are no words, I can show you but I can’t tell you because

no words get through to you, yo u ’ve got a barricade against

feeling and I have to burn it down. I grew up, a stepdaughter

o f brazen protest, immense protest; each time I measured m y

ow n resistance against the burning man; I felt the anguish o f

Vietnam; sometimes the War couldn’t get out o f m y mind and

there was nothing between me and it; I felt it pure, the pain o f

them over there, how wronged they were; you see, we were

tormenting them. In the end it’s always simple; we were

tormenting them. Others cared too; as much as I did; we were

mad to stop it; the crime, as we called it; it was a crime.

Sometimes ordinary life was a buffer; you thought about

orangejuice or something; and then there’d be no buffer; there

was ju st the crime. The big protests were easy and lazy up

against Norm an Morrison and the Buddhist monks; I remember them, as a standard; suppose you really care; suppose the

truth o f it sits on your mind plain and bare; suppose you don’t

got no more lies between you and it; if a crime was big enough

and mean enough to hurt your heart you had to burn your

heart clean; I don’t remember being afraid to die; it just wasn’t

m y turn yet; it’s got your name on it, your turn, when it’s

right; you can see it writ in fire, private flames; and it calls, you

can hear it when you get up close; you see it and it’s yours.

There’s this Lovelace creature, they’re pissing on her or she’s

doing the pissing, you know how they have girls spread out in

the pictures outside the movies, one’s on her back and the

urine’s coming on her and the other’s standing, legs spread,

and she’s fingering her crotch and the urine’s coming from

her, as i f she’s ejaculating it, and the urine’s colored a bright

yellow as if someone poured yellow dye in it; and they’re

smiling; they’re both smiling; it’s girls touching each other, as

i f girls would do so, laughing, and she’s being peed on, one o f

them; and there’s her throat, thrown back, bared, he’s down

to the bottom, as far as he can go; i f he were bigger he’d be in

deeper; and she’s timid, shy, eager, laughing, grateful;

laughing and grateful; and moaning; you know, the porn

moan; nothing resembling human life; these stupid fake

noises, clown stuff, a sex circus o f sex clowns; he’s a freak, a

sinister freak; a monstrous asshole if not for how he subjugates

her, the smiling ninny down on her knees and after saying

thank you, as girls were born for, so they say. There’s this

Lovelace girl on the marquee; and even the junkies are

laughing, they think it’s so swell; and I think who is she,

w here’s she from, who hurt her, who hurt her to put her here;

because there’s a camera; because in all my life there never was

a camera and if there’s a camera there’s a plan; and if it’s here

it’s for money, like she’s some animal trained to do tricks;

when I see black men picking cotton on plantations I get that

somewhere there’s pain for them, I don’t have to see it, no one

has to show it to me for me to know it’s there; and when I see a

wom an under glass, I know the same, a sex animal trained for

sex tricks; and the camera’s ready; maybe M asta’s not in the

frame. Picking cotton’s good; you get strong; black and

strong; getting fucked in the throat’s good; you get fucked and

female; a double-female girl, with two vaginas, one on top.

M aybe her name’s Linda; hey, Linda. Cheri Tart ain’t Cheri

but maybe Linda’s Linda; how come all these assholes buy it,

as i f they ain’t looking at Lassie or Rin Tin Tin; it’s just, pardon

me, they’re dogs and she’s someone real; they’re H ollyw ood

stars too— she’s Tim es Square trash; there’s one o f them and

there’s so many thousands o f her you couldn’t tell them apart

even when they’re in separate coffins. There’s these girls here,

all behind glass; as if they’re insects you put under glass; you

put morphine to them to knock them out and you mount

them; these weird crawling things, under glass, on display;

Tim es Square’s a zoo, they got women like specimens under

glass; block by city block; cages assembled on cement; under a

darkening sky, the blood’s on it; wind sweeping the garbage

and it’s swirling like dust in a storm; and on display, lit by

neon, they have these creatures, so obscene they barely look

human at all, you never saw a person that looked like them,

including anyone beaten down, including street trash, including anyone raped however many times; because they’re all

painted up and polished as if you had an apple with m aggots

and worm s and someone dipped it in lacquer and said here it is,

beautiful, for you, to eat; it’s as i f their mouths were all swelled

up and as if they was purple between their legs and as if their

breasts were hot-air balloons, not flesh and blood, with skin,

with feeling to the touch, instead it’s a joke, some swollen

joke, a pasted-on gag, what’s so dirty to men about breasts so

they put tassles on them and have them swirl around in circles

and call them the ugliest names; as if they ain’t attached to

human beings; as if they’re party tricks or practical jokes or the

equivalent o f farts, big, vulgar farts; they make them always

deformed; as if there’s real people; citizens; men; with flat

chests, they look down, they see their shoes, a standard for

what a human being is; and there’s these blow-up dolls you

can do things to, they have funny humps on their chests, did

you ever see them swirl, the woman stands there like a dead

puppet, painted, and the balloon things spin. In m y heart I

think these awful painted things are women; like I am still in

m y heart; o f human kind; but the men make them like they’re

two-legged jackasses, astonishing freaks with iron poles up

the middle o f them and someone smeared them with paint,

some psychotic in the loony bin doing art class, and they got

glass eyes with someone’s fingerprints smeared on them; and

they’re all swollen up and hurt, as if they been pushed and

fucked, hit, or stood somewhere in a ring, a circus ring or a

boxing ring, and men just threw things at them, balls and bats

and stones, anything hard that would cause pain and leave

marks, or break bones; they’re swollen up in some places, the

bellies o f starving children but moved up to the breasts and

down to the buttocks, all hunger, water, air, distended; and

then there’s the thin parts, all starved, the bones show, the ribs

sometimes, iridescent skeletons, or the face is caved in under

the paint, the skin collapses because there is no food, only pills,

syringes, Demerol, cocaine, Percodan, heroin, morphine,

there’s hollow cheeks sunk in hollow faces and the w aist’s

hollow, shrinking down, tiny bones, chicken bones, dried up

wish bones; and they’re behind glass, displayed, exhibits,

sex-w om en you do it to, they’re all twisted and turned,

deformed, pulled and pushed in all the w rong directions, with

the front facing the back and the back facing the front so you

can see all her sex parts at once, her breasts and her ass and her

vagina, the lips o f her vagina, purple somehow; purple. The

neck’s elongated so you know they can take it there too.

T h ey’re like mules; they carry a pile o f men on top o f them.

T h ey’re like these used-up race horses, you give them lots o f

shots to make them run and if you look at the hide there’s

bound to be whip marks. There’s not one human gesture; not

one. There’s not one woman in the world likes to be hung or

shit on or have her breasts tied up so the rope cuts in and the

flesh bulges out, the rope’s tearing into her, it sinks, burning,

into the fleshy parts, under the rope it’s all cut up and burned

deep, and the tissue’s dying, being broke apart, thinned out

and ripped by pressure and pain. If I saw pictures like that o f a

black man I would cry out for his freedom; I can’t see how it’s

confusing i f you ain’t K . K . K. in which case it still ain’t

confusing; I’d know it was a lie on him; I’d stand on that street

corner forever screaming until m y fucking throat bled to death

from it; he’s not chattel, nor a slave, nor some crawling thing

you put under glass, nor subhuman, nor alien; I would spit on

them that put him there; and them that masturbated to it I

would pillory with stones until I was dragged away and locked

up or they was dead. I f they was lynching him I would feel the

pain; a human; they are destroying someone. And if they put a

knife in him, which I can see them doing, it ain’t beyond them

by no means, they w ouldn’t show him coming from it; and if

they urinated on him he w ouldn’t be smiling. I seen black men

debased in this city, I seen them covered in blood and filth, in

urine and shit, and I never saw one say cheese for a camera or

smiling like it was fun; I didn’t see no one taking sex pictures

either; I m yself do not go through garbage or live on cement to

have an orgasm; be your pet; or live on a leash; I ain’t painted

red or purple; I seen myself; how I was after; on the bed; hurt; I

seen it in m y brain; and I wasn’t no prize in human rights or no

exemplar o f human dignity I would say; as much as I tried in

m y life, I did not succeed. But wasn’t nobody put me under

glass and polished me all up as if I was a specimen o f some

fucked thing, some swollen, painted sex mule. This Linda

girl, with the throat, who tormented her? In the end, it’s

always simple. I paid the dollars to go; to the film; to see it; if it

was true; what they did to her throat; I figured the boy who

did it to me must o f got it from there; because, frankly, I know

the world A to Z ; and no one banged a w om an’s throat before

these current dark days. I smelled bad and I was past being a

whore and they didn’t want me to go in but I had the money

and I’m hard to move, because I’m more intransigent now; on

cement; hungry almost all the time; hates men; an old woman

nearly, hates men; and if you don’t have a soft spot for them,

you don’t have no soft spot. I wanted to see Linda; if she was a

creature or a person; I think they are all persons but you can’t

prove it, it’s a matter o f faith; I have this faith, but there’s no

proof. In the film she’s this nice girl who can’t have an orgasm

so they line up hundreds o f men to fuck her, all around the

block, and they just keep fucking her every which w ay to

Sunday to try to get her to have one and she’s bored which, on

the intellectual plane, would be true; but I fucked that many

men, it’s a w eek’s worth, not one afternoon as they show, and

no one gets an orgasm from such a line o f slime acting as men,

because it will tear you and bruise you inside as well as out and

you will hurt very bad, but she just smiles and acts disappointed; and there’s all this blah blah, talk with a supposed girlfriend, a hard-edged whore, by which I mean she been

used so much already there’s not too much left o f her and it

shows, how they’ve drained her away; and they talk about

how Linda can’t come; and the girlfriend puts a cigarette in her

own vagina and I wanted to reach into the film and take it out;

a burning cigarette in her vagina; but it was another joke; it

was all jokes; the men around the block; the vagina huffing and

puffing on the cigarette so smoke comes out; and the girl

Linda’s got big bruises all over her legs, real big bruises, high

and wide, master bruises, have to be from feet and fists, it ain’t

in the story, no one hit her in the legs in the story but someone

sure beat the hell out o f her all over her fucking legs; I see the

bruises; I feel the pain; I’ve taken such a beating; perhaps,

Linda, we could be friends, you and me, although I’m

unsavory now, perhaps you ain’t no creature at all, just a girl,

another girl, but they caught you and they put you under

glass, in the zoo, yo u ’re a girl they turned the camera on but

they had to beat you to pieces to do it; maybe yo u ’re just some

girl; and then there’s this doctor with a big cock w h o ’s pleased

with him self generally speaking and he finds out she’s got a

clitoris in her throat, the big joke, and that’s w hy she can’t

come from all these other sex acts so he fucks her in the throat

to cure her, he fucks her hard in the throat but slow so you can

see it, the whole distance in and out, the whole big thing, to

the bottom o f her throat; and she don’t seem ripped apart,

she’s smiling, she’s happy, shit, she’s conscious, she’s alive;

think o f it like an iron bar, a place in your throat where there’s

an iron bar, and if someone goes past it it don’t give, you

choke, you vom it, you can’t breathe, and if he goes past it with

a big penis he stretches muscles that can’t be stretched and he

pushes your throat out to where it can’t be pushed out, as if the

outsides tore open so there was holes so it could expand so the

penis could go through, yo u ’d rather have a surgeon drill holes

in the sides o f your throat than have him push it down, the

pain will push you down to hell, near death, to coma, to the

screamless scream, an agony, no voice, a ripped muscle,

shreds swim m ing in blood in your throat, thin ribbons o f

muscle soaking up blood. But Linda smiles, and the camera

doesn’t let up, and the penis is big, it comes out so we can see

how big it is in case we forgot and it goes down, her throat

stretches like a snake eating an alligator or some boa constrictor with a small animal in it and the penis pushes hard to the bottom, it’s in her neck by now bumping around her

shoulders; again and again; and I’m crying m yself near to

death; the men are rubbing and moaning and ejaculating and

someone’s offering me money and I’m sitting there crying

near to death for the girl; because I don’t know where the

blood is; but I know there’s blood; somewhere Linda’s shed

blood and there’s pieces o f her floating around in it; Linda.

They do all the things to her; glass in her vagina; from the

front; from behind; all the things; and it’s all big jokes and big

moaning, the phony moans, ooh and aah and more and

harder, stupid, false moans; and you think these men are crazy

to think this is a woman moaning in sex; and then there’s this

guy with the w orld’s biggest penis and he fucks her throat and

she’s in love with him because he’s got this giant penis so he

satisfies her, at last, completely, a romance, he fucks her

throat, he is a cold creep, a sheet o f ice descends over the

screen, he fucks her throat; he’s evil, even for these men who

do these things to women in films; who will do anything; to

anyone; present her to him; put her there; lights, camera,

action; roll her over; stick it there or there or there; yeah, she’s

tied up like a trussed pig; he says darling and sticks it in.

There’s one decision, just one; and I have to make it; are we

humans or not; the girls under glass and I or not. If we are not

then there’s these creatures kept properly under glass because

w ho’d want them loose and the bruises on them or what you

stick in them doesn’t matter and they smile because they are

sincere, this under-glass creature smiles when you hurt it, and

you get to use them; and, logically, you get to use the five

infants too, w hy not, and this girl from Camden too, w hy not;

because w e’re apples with maggots too, w hy not. M aybe this

girl Linda really likes it; except there’s this iron bar in your

throat and nothing pushes past it without a destruction o f

some sort, this or that; or w hy don’t they use machine guns or

trees or they will, they just haven’t yet, h o w ’d they get that

Linda girl to do it? O r if w e’re humans; if we are; the fire’s got

m y name on it; at last, m y name’s spelled out in the fire and it is

beckoning to me; because they are tormenting us, pure and

simple, these men are tormenting us, they just do it, as if we

are so much trash for where they want to stick it and it is

simple in the end and they all get to live no matter what harm

they do or if we hurt or how much, all these guys live, they do;

face it; you can take some actual person and mess her body up

so bad it’s all deformed out o f its real form and you can put

things up her and in her and you can hurt her, shred her, burn

her, tortures that are done like roping her breasts, and it’s

okay, even funny, even if they do it to babies or even if they

beat you or even i f they put things in you or no matter what

they do, it’s over and tom orrow comes and they go on and on

and on and they don’t get stopped, no one stops them; and

people ju st walk by the girls under glass; or just ignore the

infants who grow ed up, the suicidal infants who can’t breathe

but are trying to talk; or the women who got beat; no one

stops them; it’s true, they don’t get stopped; and it’s true,

though not recognized, that you do got to stop them, like stop

the War, or stop slavery; you have to stop them; whatever’s

necessary; because it’s a crisis because they are tormenting us; I

gave m y uncle cancer but it’s too late, too slow, and you don’t

know who they are, the particular ones; and even if there’s

laws by the time they have hurt you you are too dirty for the

law; the law needs clean ones but they dirty you up so the law

w o n ’t take you; there’s no crimes they committed that are

crimes in the general perception because we don’t count as to

crimes, as I have discovered time and time again as I try to

think i f what he did that hurt me so bad was a crime to anyone

or was anything you could tell someone about so they would

care; for you; about you; so you was human. But if he did it to

you, you know him; I know; this Linda knows; the infants

know; the day comes; we know; each one o f them has one o f

us who knows; at least one; maybe dozens; but at least one.

When the Buddhists were burning themselves you couldn’t

convince anyone anything was wrong in Vietnam; they

couldn’t see it; they saw the fire; and you couldn’t forget the

fire; and I’m convinced that the fire made the light to see by; so

later, we saw. N o w there’s nothing w rong either; nothing

nobody can see; each day all these thousands o f people, men

and women, walk past the women under glass, the specimens,

and they don’t see nothing wrong, they don’t see no human o f

any sort or that it’s wrong that our kind are under glass,

painted, bloated cadavers for sex with spread legs, eyes open,

glassy, staring like the dead; smiling; painted lips; purple;

lynched or pissed on; or on our knees; I will die to get her o ff

her knees; sperm covering us like puke; and w e’re embalmed,

a psychotic’s canvas; eventually fucked, in any orifice; someday they’ll do the sockets o f the eyes. It’s the church to our pain; a religion o f hate with many places to pray; a liturgy o f

invasion; they worship here, the men, Hot Girls is Michael-

angelo’s David\ Lesbian Gang Bang is Tintoretto; it’s Venice

and Rom e and Jerusalem and Mecca, too; all the art; everything sacred; with pilgrims; the service, how I injured her and

came; the ancient masses, how I made a perfect penetration;

the ordinary prayers, I felt her up, I stuck it in, she screamed, I

ran; this is the church here, they worship here, a secular sadism

where w e’re made flat and dead and displayed under glass,

fifty cents a feel for a live one in a real cage, behind the movies

are the places where they keep the live ones they caught, you

pay money, you touch it; you pay more money; it touches

you; you pay more money; you can hurt it bad i f you pay

enough; you pay money, you can stick it in, you want to cut it

up, it costs more money; you want it young, you want to stick

it in, you want to cut it up, it costs more money; but see, m y

uncle, a true believer, worshipped at home; so you have to

grasp the true nature o f the system; here is the center; here is

like the transmission center; here is where they broadcast

from; here is where they put the waves in the air; here is where

they make the product, the assembly line with mass

production techniques and quality control, the big time, and

they sell it to make it socially true and socially necessary and

socially real, beyond dispute, it’s for sale, in Amerika, it’s true,

a practical faith for the working man and the entrepreneur,

rich man, poor man. It’s the nerve center, the Pentagon, the

w ar room, where they make the plans; map every move in the

war; put the infantry here and m ove it here; put the boats here

and m ove them here; put the bombs here and move them here;

dildos, whips, knives, chains, punishments, sweat and

strangulation, evisceration; they teach how to teach the

soldiers; they teach how to teach the special units; they teach

how to teach; they develop propaganda and training films,

patriotic films, here’s the target, take her out. Here’s where

they make the plans to make the weapons; and here’s where

they commission the weapons; and here’s where they deploy

the weapons; it’s the church, holy, and the military, profane,

backbone and bedrock, there’s dogma and rules, prayers and

marching chants, sacred rites and bayonets, there’s everything

you stick up them, from iron crosses to grenades; you pull the

pin; stay inside them as long as you have the nerve; pull out;

run; it makes a man out o f a boy. There’s a human being;

under glass. I f you see what’s in front o f you you see w hat’s

down the road: someday they’ll just take the children, the pied

piper o f rape, they’ll ju st use the children, it’s so much easier,

how it is now is so difficult, so com plex, fun taming the big

ones and seducing them and raping them but the children are

tighter, you know; and hurt more, you know; and are so

confused, you know; and love you anyway, you know. All

the worshippers will be tolerant o f each other; and they’ll pass

the little ones on, down the line, so everyone can pray; and the

courts will let them; because the courts have always let them;

it’s just big daddy in a dress, the appearance o f neutrality. I

been living in Times Square, on the sidewalks, I seen all the

marquees, I studied them, I have two questions all the time,

w hy ain’t she dead is one and w hy would anyone, even a man,

think it’s true— her all strung out, all painted, all glossy,

proclaiming being peed on is what she wants; I do not get how

the lie flies; or ain’t they ever made love; or ever seen no one

real; and maybe she’s dead by now; they must think it’s like

you are born a porn thing; in the hospital they take the baby

and they say take it to the warehouse, it’s a porn thing. They

must think it’s a special species; with purple genitals and skin

made from a pale steel that don’t even feel no pain; or they

think every girl is one, underneath, and they wait, until we

turn purple, from cold, or a thin patina o f blood, dried so it’s

an encasement, like an insect’s carapace. And they get hard

from it, the porn thing, flat and glossy, dead and slick, and

after they find something resembling the specimen from

under the glass and they stick it in; a girl in the rain; five

infants; some girl. It’s like how Plato tried to explain; the thing

pure, ideal, as if you went through some magical fog and came

to a whole world o f perfect ideas and there’s Linda taking it

whole; and they wander through the pure world putting fifty

cents down there to cop a feel and five dollars down there, and

for a hundred you see a little girl buggered, and for fifty you do

something perfect and ideal to a perfect whore or some perfect

blow -up doll with a deep silk throat and a deep silk vagina and

a rough, tight rectum, and you come back through the fog and

there’s the girl, not quite so purple, and you do it to her; yeah,

she cries if you hang her or brand her or maim her or even

probably if you fuck her in the ass, she don’t smile, but you can

hurt her enough to make her smile because she has to smile

because if she don’t she gets hurt more, or she’ll try, and you

can paint her more purple, or do anything really; put things in

her; even glass or broken glass and make her bleed, you can get

the color you want; you strive for the ideal. I fuck it up, I say

the girl’s real, but it don’t stop them; and we got to stop them;

so I take the necessary supplies, some porn magazines where

they laminate the women, and I take the stones for breaking

the glass, I will not have women under glass, and I take signs

that say “ Free the Women, Free O urselves” and “ Porn Hates

W omen” and I take a sign that says “ Free Linda” and I have a

sign that says “ Porn Is Rape” and I take a letter I wrote m yself

that says to m y mama how sorry I am to have failed at dignity

and at freedom both, and I say I am Andrea but I am not

manhood for which, mama, I am glad, because they have gone

to filth, they are maggots on this earth; and I take gasoline, and

I’m nearly old for a girl, I’m hungry and I have sores, and I

smell bad so no one looks at all very much, and I go to outside

Deep Throat where m y friend Linda is in the screen and I put

the gasoline on me, I soak m yself in it in broad daylight and

many go by and no one looks and I am calm, patient, gray on

gray cement like the Buddhist monks, and I light the fire; free

us, I start to scream, and then there’s a giant whoosh, it

explodes more like wind than fire, it’s orange, around me,

near me, I’m whole, then I’m flames. I burn; I die. From this

light, later you will see. Mama, I made some light.

E L E V E N

April 30, 1974

(Age 27)

Sensei is cute but she’s fascist. She makes us bow to the Korean

flag; I bow but I don’t look. We are supposed to be reverent in

our hearts but in m y heart is where I rebel. It is more than a

bow. We bow. We get down on our knees and we bow our

heads. It’s the opening ceremony o f every class. In karate you

get down on your knees in a lightning flash o f perfect

movement so there’s no scramble, no noise; it’s a perfect

silence and everyone moves as one; the movement itself

expresses reverence and your mind is supposed to obey, it

moves with the body, not against it, except for mine, which is

anarchist from a long time ago and I never thought I’d bow

down in front o f any fucking flag but I do, in perfect silence

and sym m etry insofar as my awkward self can manage it; my

mind’s like a muscle that pulls every time; I feel it jerk and I feel

the dislocation and the pain and I keep m oving, until I am on

m y knees in front o f the fucking thing. It’s interesting to think

o f the difference between a flag and a dick, because this is not a

new position; with a dick how you get there doesn’t count

whereas in the dojo all that matters is the elegance, the grace,

o f the movement, the strength o f the muscles that carry you

down; an act o f reverence will eventually, says Sensei, teach

you self-respect, which wasn’t the issue with the dick, as I

remember. There’s an actual altar. It has on it the Korean flag,

a picture o f Sensei, and some dried flowers. When I was a child

I had a huge picture o f Rock Hudson up on the door in m y tiny

bedroom, on the back o f the door so I would see it when I was

alone, as if he was there, physically present with me, because

the picture was so big and real and detailed, o f a real face; I put