edges o f m y mind, it was a red landscape o f nothing that was in
me and that I put on everything I saw like it was burned on my
eyes, and I always saw Camden that way; in m y inner-mind it
was the landscape o f where I lived. It didn’t matter that I went
to Point Zero. It would just be faster and I hadn’t been hiding
there under the desk afraid. I hate being afraid. I hadn’t grown
up there waiting for it to happen and making pictures o f it in
m y mind seeing the terrible dust, the awful nothing, and I
hadn’t died there during the Bay o f Pigs. The red dust was
Camden. Y ou can’t forgive them when you’re a child and they
make you afraid. So you go away from where you were afraid.
Some stay; some go; it’s a big difference, leaving the
humiliations o f childhood, the morbid fear. We didn’t have
much to say to each other, the ones that left and the ones that
stayed. Children get shamed by fear but you can’t tell the
adults that; they don’t care. They make children into dead
things like they are. If there’s something left alive in you, you
run. Y ou run from the poor little child on her knees; fear
burned the skin o ff all right; she’s still on her knees, dead and
raw and tender. N ew Y o rk ’s nothing, a piece o f cake; you
never get afraid like that again; not ever. I live where I can find
a bed. Men roll on top, fuck, roll off, shoot up, sleep, roll on
top again. In between you sleep. It’s how it is and it’s fine. I
never did feel more at home. It’s as i f I was always there. It’s
familiar. The streets are the same gray, home. Fucking is
nothing really. Hiding from the law and dumb adults is
ordinary life; yo u ’re always hiding from them anyw ay unless
yo u ’re one o f their robots. I hate authority and it’s no jo k e and
it’s no game; I want them dead all right, all the order givers.
N ew Y o r k ’s home because there’s other people the same; we
know each other as much as you have to, not much. The only
other w ay is the slow time o f mothers; facing a wall, staring at
a blank wall, for life, one man, forever, marriage, the living
dead. I don’t want to be like them. I never will be. I’m not
afraid o f dying and I’m not standing quiet at some wall; the
bomb comes at me, I’m going to hurl m yself into it; flashfly
into its fucking face. I’m fine on the streets. I’m not afraid; o f
fucking or anyone; and there’s nothing I’m afraid of. I have
ideals about peace and freedom and it doesn’t matter what the
adults think, because they lie and they’re stupid. I’m sincere
and smarter than them. I believe in universal love. I want to
love everybody even if I don’t know them and not to have
small minds like the adults. I don’t mind if people are strangers
or how they look and no matter how raw som ebody is they’re
human; it’s the plastic ones that aren’t human. I don’t need a
lot, a place to sleep, some money, almost none, cigarettes.
Everyone in this place knows something, jazz or poems or
