H e’s not the milk o f human kindness she says and hangs up; is
raped me worse than cheated on you? I got some change, some
quarters, some dimes, m y favorite, half dollars, they’re pretty
like silver, I like them. She knew it was bad; raped me. The
earth’s round but the streets are flat. There’s rain forests but
the streets are cold. I can’t really say I understand. It’s ten a. m.
I’m tw enty-six years old. I got a wound on m y leg, a nasty
sore, dirty fucking sore from a rabid dog, slobbering m angy
cur, an old bag lady’s sore, ugly fucking sore; maybe the
A . S . P . C . A . ’d come and get him. I could use a drink. I got to
sleep before there’s night, it comes fast in winter, you lose
track. It’s ten a. m .; and soon it will be ten-o-five; soon. Y ou
have to count fast, keep counting, to keep track. U g ly,
fucking, stupid bitch, got to sleep, can’t lie down. There’s
fleas.
N I N E
In October 1973
(Age 27)
There’s a basketball court next to where I live, not a court
exactly, a hoop high up, and broken cement, rocks, broken
glass; there’s boys that play, the game ain’t ballet like on
television, it’s malice, they smash the ball like they’re smashing heads and you don’t want to distract them, you want their
eyes on the ball, always on the ball, you want them playing
ball; so you get small and quiet walking by, you don’t let
nothing rattle or shake, you just blend, into the sidewalk, into
the air, get gray like the fence, it’s wire, shaky, partly walling
the place in, you walk quiet and soft and hope your heart don’t
beat too loud; and there’s a parking lot for cops right next to
the basketball, not the official vehicles but the cars they come
to work in, the banged up C hevys and Fords they drive in
from the suburbs because most o f them don’t live here no
more but still, even though they got more money than they
make you don’t see nothing smart and sleek, there’s just this
old metal, bulky, heavy, discolored. The young cops are tight
and you don’t want to see them spring loose, their muscles are
all screwed together real tight and their lips are tight, sewed
tight, and they stand straight and tight and they look ahead,
not around, their pupils are tight in the dead center o f their
eyes staring straight ahead; and the older ones wear cheap
sports jackets too big for them, gray, brown, sort o f plaid,
nearly tweed, wrinkled, and their shoulders sag, and they are
morose men, and their cars can barely hold them, their legs fall
out loose and disorganized and then they move their bodies
around to be in the same direction as the legs that fell down,
they m ove the trunks o f their bodies from behind the steering
wheels against gravity and disregarding common sense and
the air moves out o f the way, sluggish and slow, displaced by
their hanging bellies, and they are tired men, and they see
everything, they have eyes that circle the globe, insect eyes
and third eyes, they see in front and behind and on each side,
their eyes spin without m oving, and they see you no matter
how blank and quiet you are, they see you sneaking by, and
they wonder w hy you are sneaking and what you have to hide,
they note that you are trash, they have the view that anything
female on this street is a piece o f gash, an open wound inviting
you in for a few pennies, and that you especially who are
walking by them now have committed innumerable evils for
which you must pay and you want to argue except for the fact
that they are not far from wrong, it is not an argument you can
win, and that makes you angrier against them and fearful, and
you try to disappear but they see you, they always see you; and
you learn not to think they are fools; they will get around to
you; today, tom orrow, someday soon; and they see the boys
playing basketball and they want to smash them, smash their
fucking heads in, but they’re too old to smash them and they
can’t use their guns, not yet, not now; even the young cops
couldn’t smash them fair, they’re too rigid, too slow up
against the driving rage o f the boys with the ball; so you see
them noting it, noting that they got a grudge, and the cars are
parked on gravel and broken glass and rocks and they should
have better and they know it but they don’t and they w o n ’t
and later they get to use the guns, somewhere, the city’s full o f
fast black boys who get separated from the pack; and you hear
the fuck, shit, asshole, o f the basketball players as a counterpoint to the solitary fuck, shit, asshole, o f the lone cops as they emerge from their cars, they put down their heavy legs and
their heavy feet in their bad old shoes, all worn, chewed
leather, and they pull themselves out o f their old cars, and
they’re tired men, overweight, there ain’t many young ones at
all, and there’s a peculiar sadness to them, the fascists are
melancholy in Gotham, they say fuck, shit, asshole, like it’s
soliloquies, like it’s prayers, like it’s amen, like it’s exegesis on
existence, like it’s unanswered questions, urgent, eloquent,
articulated to God; lonely, tired old Nazis, more like Hamlet,
though, than like Lear, introspective from exhaustion, not
grand or arrogant or merciless in delusion; and the boys hurl
the ball like it’s bombs, like it’s rocks and stones, like it’s
bullets and they’re the machines o f delivery, the weapons o f
death, machine guns o f flesh, bang bang bang, each round so
fast, so hard, as the ball hits the ground and the boy moves
with it, a weapon with speed up its ass; and they’re a choir o f
fuck, shit, asshole, voices still on the far edge o f an adolescent
high, not the raspy, cigarette-ruined voices o f the lonely, sad
men; the boys run, the boys sing the three words they know, a
percussive lyric, they breathe deep, skin and viscera breathe,
everything inside and outside breathes, there’s a convulsion,
then another one, they exhale as if it’s some sublime soprano
aria at the Met, supreme art, simple, new each time, the air
comes out urgent and organized and with enough volume to
fill a concert hall, it’s exhilarating, a human voice, all the words
they don’t know; and the cops, old, young, it don’t matter,
barely breathe at all, they breathe so high up in the throat that
the air barely gets out, it’s thin and depressed and somber, it’s
old and it’s stale and it’s pale and it’s flat, there’s no words to it