go for the edge, a feeling, it’s worth the risk; you learn what
they want, early, easy, it’s not hard, you can ride the energy
they give out or see it in how they m ove or read it o ff their
hips; or you can guide them, there’s never enough blow jo b s
they had to make them tired o f it i f worse comes to worse and
you need to, it will make him stupid and weak but sometimes
he’s mean after because he’s sure yo u ’re dirt, anyone w h o ’s
had him in her mouth is dirt, how do they get by, these guys,
so low and mean. It’s you, him, midnight, cement; viscous
dark, slate gray bed, light falling down from tarnished bulbs
above you; neon somewhere rattling, shaking, static shocks to
your eye, flash, zing, zip, winding words, a long poem in
flickering light; what is neon and how did it get into the sky at
night? The great gray poet talked it but he didn’t have to do it.
He was a shithead. I’m the real poet o f everyone; the Am erikan
democrat on cement, with everyone; it wears you down,
Walt; I don’t like poetry anymore; it’s semen, you great gray
clod, not some fraternal wave o f democratic j o y . I was born in
1946 down the street from where Walt Whitman lived; the girl
he never wanted, I can face it now; in Cam den, the great gray
city; on great gray cement, broken, bleeding, the girls
squashed down on it, the fuck weighing down on top,
pushing in behind; blood staining the gravel, mine not his;
bullshitter poet, great gray bullshitter; having all the men in
the world, and all the wom en, hard, real, true, it wears you
down, great gray virgin with fantastic dreams, you great gray
fool. I was born in 1946 down the street from where Walt
Whitman lived, in Camden, Andrea, it means manhood or
courage but it was pink pussy anyway wrapped in a pink fuzzy
blanket with big men’s fingers going coochie coochie coo.
Pappa said don’t believe what’s in books but if it was a poem I
believed it; m y first lyric poem was a street, cement, gray,
lined with monuments, broken brick buildings, archaic,
empty vessels, great, bloodstained walls, a winding road to
nowhere, gray, hard, light falling on it from a tarnished moon
so it was silver and brass in the dark and it went out straight
into the gray sky where the moon was, one road o f cement and
silver and night stained red with real blood, you’re down on
your knees and he’s pushing you from inside, G od’s heartbeat
ramming into you and the skin is scraped loose and you bleed
and stain the stone under you. Here’s the poem you got. It’s
your flesh scraped until it’s rubbed o ff and you got a mark, you
got a burn, you got stains o f blood, you got desolation on you.
It’s his mark on you and you’ve got his smell on you and his
bruise inside you; the houses are monuments, brick, broken
brick, red, blood red. There’s a skyline, five floors high, three
floors high, broken brick, chopped o ff brick, empty inside,
with gravel lots and a winding cement road, Dorothy
tap-dances to Oz, up the yellow brick road, the great gray road,
he’s on you, twisted on top o f you, his arms twisted in your
arms, his legs twisted in your legs, he’s twisted in you, there’s
a great animal in the dark, him twisting draped over you, the
sweat silver and slick; the houses are brick, monuments
around you, you’re laid out dead and they’re the headstones,
nothing written on them, they tower over your body put to
rest. The only signs o f existence are on you, you carry them on
you, the marks, the bruises, the scars, your body gets marked
where you exist, it’s a history book with the signs o f civilized
life, communication, the city, the society, belles lettres, a
primitive alphabet o f blood and pain, the flesh poem, poem o f
the girl, when a girl says yes, what a girl says yes to, what
happens to a girl who is poesy on cement, your body the paper
and the poem, the press and the ink, the singer and the song;
it’s real, it’s literal, this song o f myself, yo u ’re what there is,
the medium, the message, the sign, the signifier; an autistic
poem. Tattooed boys are your friends, they write the words
on their skin; but your skin gets used up, scraped aw ay every
time they push you down, you carry what you got and what
you know, all your belongings, him on you through time, in
the scars— your meanings, your lists, your items, your serial
numbers and identification numbers, social security, registration, which one you are, your name in blood spread thin on
your skin, spread out on porous skin, thin and stretched, a
delicate shade o f fear toughened by callouses o f hate; and you
learn to read your name on your body written in your blood,
the book o f signs, manhood or courage but it’s different when
pussy does it. Y ou don’t set up housekeeping, a room with
things; instead you carry it all on you, not on your back tied
down, or on your head piled up; it’s in you, carved in, the cold
on you, you on cement, sexy abrasions, sexy blood, sexy
black and blue, the heat’s on you, your sw eat’s a wet
membrane between you and the weather, all there is, and you
have burns, scars, there’s gray cement, a silver gray under a
tarnished, brassy moon, there’s a cement graveyard, brick
gravestones, the em pty brick buildings; and yo u ’re laid out,
for the fucking. Walt was a fool, a virgin fool; you would have
been ground down, it’s not love, it’s slaughter, you fucking
fool. I’m the field, they fall on me and bruise the ground, you
don’t hear the earth you fall on crying out but a poet should
know. Prophets are fucking fools. What I figured out is that
writers sit in rooms and make it up. M arx made it up. Walt
made it up. Fucking fools like me believe it; do it; foot soldiers
in hell. Sleep is the worst time, God puts you in a fuck-m e
position, you can’t run, you can’t fight, you can’t stay alive
without luck, you’re in the dark and dead, they can get you,
have you, use you; you manage to disappear, become invisible
in the dark, or it’s like being hung out to dry, you’re under
glass, in a museum, all laid out, on display, waiting fpr
whatever gang passes by to piss on you; it’s inside, they’re not
supposed to come inside but there is no inside where they can’t
come, it’s only doors and windows to keep them out, open
sesame and the doors and windows open or they bash them
open and no one stops them and you’re inside laid out for
them, come, hurt me now, I’m lying flat, helpless, some
fucking innocent naked baby, a sweet, helpless thing all curled