Mercy

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 pieces 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