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,
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 stic
ks 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