Madame Curie o f freedom, or she’s Garbo, or more likely,
she’s Che, she’s got to be a monster o f freedom, a hero o f
loveless love; Napoleon but they didn’t lock her up or she got
loose, now, for me; no beat up junkie fool; no beautiful piece
looking for a hamburger. There’s magnificent women out
here. These lights light you up. Y ou are on Broadw ay and
there are stars o f a high magnitude. There’s the queen o f them
all who taught me— sweet name, Rebecca; ruthless crusher o f
a dyke; honest to God, she’s wearing a gold lame dress when I
meet her in jail when I’m a kid, eighteen, a political prisoner as
it were, as I saw myself, and she loves poetry and she sends me
a pile o f
and I don’t want her on me, not in jail, I’m too scared, too
hurt, but she protects me anyway, and I get out fast enough
that I don’t have to do her, and I see her later out here and I
remember her kindness, which it was, real kindness, taking
care o f me in that place, which was w hy I was treated right by
the other inmates as it were; I see her on the street, gold lame
against a window, I see her shimmering, and I go with her for
thanks and because she is grand, and I find out you can be free
in a gold lame dress, in jail, whoring, in black skin, in hunger,
in pain, in strife, the strife o f the streets, perpetual war, gritty,
gray, she’s the wild one with freedom in her soul, it translates
into how you touch, what’s in your fingers, the silk in your
hands, the freedom you take with who you got under you;
you got your freedom and you take theirs for when you are
with them, you are a caretaker o f the fragile freedom in them,
because most women don’t got much, and you don’t be afraid
to take, you turn their skin to flames, you eat them raw, your
name’s all over them, you wrap them up in you, crush them in
you, and what you give is ambition, the ambition to do it
big, do it great, big gestures, free— girls do it big, girls soar,
girls burn, girls take big not puny; stop giving, child, better
to be stole from than to give— stop giving away the little that
you got. I stay with her until she’s finished with me, she’s
doing her art on me, she’s practicing freedom on me; I’m
shaking from it, her great daring, the audacity o f her body on
mine; she’s free on me and I learn from it on me how to do it
and how to be it; flamboyant lovemaking, no apology, dead
serious, we could die right after this and this is the last thing
we know and it’s enough, the last minute, the last time, the
last touch, God comes down through her on me, the good
God, the divine God; master lovemaker, lightning in a girl,
I’ve got a new theology, She’s a rough Girl; and what’s
between m y legs is a running river, She made it then She
rested; a running river; so deep, so long, clear, bright, smart,