off; so too in the brain, the skin peels off; I’ve been there, a
poor, dear, quiet thing, naked like a baby, in a river o f blood,
mine, curled up; fetal, as if m y mama took me back. There’s
wounds and you sit in the blood. Why can’t I remember? I am
a stroke victim, a shadow in the night, invisible in the night, a
ghostly thing, in the night, amnesiac, wandering, in the night,
not out to whore, just what’s left, the remains, on the stroll;
taking a walk, pastoral, romantic, an innocent walk, lost in
memories, lost in fog, lost in dark; having forgotten; but I got
muscles packed with memory; hard, thick, solid, from the
positions reenacted, down on m y knees, down on m y back; I
got memories packed in m y bones, because m y brain don’t
make distinctions no more; can’t tell him from him from him;
I have an intuitive dread; o f him and him and him; there’s a
heightened anxiety; I’m a nervous girl, Victorian nerves,
strain, a delicate constitution in the sense that m y brain is frail,
pale; but m y muscles is packed, it’s adrenaline, from fear;
there’s a counterproductive side to creating too much fear, it’s
a meta-amphetamine, it’s meta-speed, it’s meta-coke, it’s
more testosterone than thou, I got a body packed with rage,
you ever seen rage all stored up like a treasure in the body o f a
woman? I don’t need no full capacity brain, as you so
eloquently have insisted; I got sunstrokes in my head, enough
daylight to carry me through any darkness, I am lit up from
inside, a bursting sun; brain light. I am a citizen o f the night,
on a stroll, no dark places keep secrets from me, I am drawn to
them by a secret radiance, the light that emanates from the
human heart, some poor bum, a poor man, poor fucking
drunk somewhere in the shadows hiding his poor drunk heart
in the dark, but I find him, I see the pure light o f his pure heart,
I find him, some asshole, a vagrant, clutching his bottle, and I
like them big, I like them hairy, their skin’s red and bulbous,
all swelled from drinking, they’re mean, they’d kill you for the
fucking bottle they’re clutching to them, sometimes they got
it buried under them, and they’re curled up on cardboard or
newspapers on the street, all secure in the shadows, manly
men, behind garbage cans, hidden in the dark; but the light in
them reaches out to the light in me, my brothers, myself, I
pick on men at least twice my size, I like them with fine
shoulders, wide, real men, I like them six feet or more, I like
them vicious, I pick them big and mean, the danger psyches
me up but what I appreciate is their surprise, which is absolute,
their astonishment, which invigorates me; how easy it is to
make them eat shit; they will always underestimate me,
always, from which I enunciate the political principle, Alw ays
pick on men at least twice your size. This is the value o f
practice as opposed to theory; they’re so easy; so arrogant; so
