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 piece
s 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,
Mercy Page 38