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
