do something else; I just can’t remember his face, as if I never
saw it. He was a Taurus. I stayed away from them after that if I
knew a man was one because they stay too long, slow, steady,
forever. I never saw such longevity. She was Ellen, some
flower child girl; doomed for housework. I’m not. I ain’t
cleaning up after them. I keep things as clean as I can; but you
can’t really stay clean; there’s too much heat and dirt. It’s a
sweltering night. The little nymphs, imps, and pimps o f
summer flitter about like it’s tea time at the Ritz. There’s been
uprisings on the streets, riots, lootings, burning; the air is
crackling with violence, a blue white fire eating up the
oxygen, it’s tiny, sharp explosions that go o ff in the air around
your head, firecrackers you can’t see that go o ff in front o f you
when you walk, in front o f your face, and you don’t know
when the air itself will become some white hot tornado, ju st
enough to crack your head open and boil your brains. T hat’s
outside, the world. Summertime and the living is easy. Y ou
just walk through the fires between the flames or crawl on
your belly under them; rough on your knees and elbows. Y o u
can be in the street and have a steaming mass, hot heat, kinetic,
come at you, a crowd, men at the top o f their energy, men
spinning propelled by butane, and they bear down on you on
the sidewalk, they come at you, martial chaos; they will march
over you, yo u ’ll be crushed, bone m arrow ground into a paste
with your own blood, a smear left on a sidewalk. The crow d ’s
a monster animal, a giant w olf, huge and frantic, tall as the
sky, blood pulsing and rushing through it, one predator,
bearing down, a hairy, freaky, hungry thing, bared teeth,
ugly, hungry thing, it springs through the air, light and lethal,
and you will fucking cringe, hide, run, disappear, to be safe—
you will fucking hide in a hole, like some roachy thing you
will crawl into a crack. Y ou can hear the sound o f them
coming, there’s a buzz coming up from the cement, it vibrates
and kicks up dust, and somewhere a fire starts, somewhere
close, and somewhere police in helmets with nightsticks are
bearing down on the carnivorous beast, somewhere close and
you can hear the skulls cracking open, and the blood comes,
somewhere close there’s blood, and you can hear guns, there’s
guns somewhere close because you smell the burning smell,
it’s heat rising o ff someone’s open chest, the singed skin still
sm oking where the bullet went through; the w o lfs being beat
down— shot over and over, wounded, torn open— it’s big
manly cops doing it, steel faces, lead boots— they ain’t
harassing whores tonight. It looks like foreplay, the w ay the
cops bear down on the undulating mass; I stroke your face
with m y nightstick; the lover tames the beloved; death does
