needless to say are superb, possibly even sublime, it’s been
noted many times. M any a man’s died his little death there and
I made the mistake o f not burying him when he was exactly
ripe for it, not putting him, whole, under the ground, but I
soaked up his soul, I took it like they always fear, I stole his
essence to in me, it’s protein, I got his molecules; and I never
died. It is more than relevant; it is the point. I never died. I am
not dead. If you use us up and use us up and use us up but don’t
kill us we ain’t dead, boys; a word to the wise; peace now, or
there’s a mean lot o f killing coming. I am torn up in many
places and I am a m oving mountain o f pain, I have tears body
and soul, I am marked and scarred and black-and-blue inside
and out, I got torn muscles in m y throat and blood that dried
there that w o n ’t ever dislodge and rips in m y vagina the size o f
fists and fissures in m y anus like rivers and holes in m y heart, a
sad heart; but I ain’t dead, I never died, which means, boys, I
can march, I want to walk to God on you, stretch you out
under me, a pathway to heaven. And I am real; Andrea one,
two, three, there’s more than one, I am reliably informed; the
raped; Andrea, named for courage, a new incarnation o f
virility, in the old days called manhood and I’m what happens
when it’s fucked; we go by other names, Sally, Jane, whatever;
but I had a prophet for a mama and she named not just a
daughter but a breed, who the girl is when the worm turns;
put Thomas Jefferson in my place, horse position on his back
with a mob o f erect rapists coming and going at will, at their
pleasure; and ask what a more perfect union is; or would be;
from his point o f view; then. Put anyone human where I been
and make a plan; for freedom. I will fill you with remorse
because you fucked me to ground meat and because you buy it
and you sell it and the hole in my heart is commerce to you;
lover, husband, boychick, brother, friend, political radical,
boy comrade; I can’t fucking tell you all apart. Y o u ’re
pouncing things that push it in,. lush with insult or austere with
pain; I don’t got no radio in my stomach like the crazy ones
who get messages to kill and can’t turn it o ff or dislodge it
although you stuck enough in me, they say they hear voices
and they kill, they say they are getting orders and they kill, and
the psychiatrists come in the newspapers and call them long
bad names and go to court and say they didn’t know what they
were doing; but they knew; because everyone knows. The
psychiatrists miss it all but especially that there’s information
everywhere; the radio, the voices, are metaphors used by
poets who dance rather than write it down, poet-killers; action
poems; there’s energy that buzzes, a coherent language o f
noise and static you can learn to read, you don’t need to be
subliterate on this plane, just receive, receive; there’s waves
