light is perfect and pure, inside the words, so lucid, so simple,
so plain; never a cartoonish lie. O f course it’s different for me
because I turned tricks and been fucked nearly to death and I
have been made weary with dirt and m y mind’s been buried
alive, really, smashed down right into the ground, pushed
under deep; but something ain’t different if I could conquer the
fear o f seeing and knowing, if I wasn’t so afraid o f the light
burning right through m y stupid brain. Y ou want to smoke a
joint or something to make it calmer and duller; not brighter;
it ain’t brighter; it calms you right down or it frenzies you up
but so you are distracted, mentally m oving here and there,
you want something between you and the light, a shield, a
permeable barrier, you want to defuse it or deflect it, to
m ellow it out, to make it softer, not so deadly to your own
soul, not so likely to blow all your own circuits, you can’t
really stand too much light in a world where you got to get
used to crawling around like an insect in the dark, because it’s
like mining coal in that if you don’t get out o f the mine what
goes through you will collapse you. Y o u r mind does stupid
tricks to mask that you are betraying something o f grave
importance. It wanders so you w o n ’t notice that you are
deserting your own life, abandoning it to triviality and
garbage, how you are too fucking afraid to use your own brain
for what it’s for, which is to be a host to the light, to use it, to
focus it; let it shine and carry the burden o f what is illuminated,
everything buried there; the light’s scarier than anything it
shows, the pure, direct experience o f it in you as if your mind
ain’t the vegetable thing it’s generally conceived to be or the
nightmare thing you know it to be but a capacity you barely
imagined, real; overwhelm ing and real, pushing you out to
the edge o f ecstasy and knowing and then do you fall or do you
jum p or do you fly? Life can concentrate itself right in your head
and you get scared; it is cowardice. I notice that my eyes start to
wander across the wall, back and forth, keep wandering across
nothing, or looking at the fucking paint, I notice that my feet are
moving and I’m shifting on the chair, a straight-back wood chair
you have to sit still on, there’s no license to move but I’m
moving, rattling m y feet, rocking, rocking on m y heels, and
then there’s an urgent sensation in m y thighs and in my hips and
wherever sex is down there, whatever you want to call it, there’s
only bad names for it but it isn’t bad and it is real and it sends you
out, it sends you away, it makes you impatient and distracted,
and I feel like busting out, and some nights I do, I bust out. I take
all the money I got on me, and if it’s ten dollars I’m flush, and I
ju st bolt, I get out and drink, I find a man, sometimes a
woman, sometimes both, I like both at once, I like being
drunk, or I start out just for a drink and I end up with
someone, drunk; fucking happy drunk; no light but everything glistens; no illumination but everything shines. Som etimes I ju st walk, I can walk it off, aimlessly. It’s as dangerous as fucking, takes nearly the same adrenaline, just to take a walk
at night, even if you walk towards the neon and not towards
the dark park; ain’t a woman in Amerika walks towards the
park. If I can calm m yself I go home. But there’s times if I was
a man I’d kill someone. I feel wild and mean and I’m tired o f
being messed with, I got invisible bars all around me and I
have blame in my heart to them that put them there and I want
to fucking tear them apart, I want my insides turned out in
bruising them, I don’t want no skin left on me that ain’t
roughed them up, I want them bloodied, I want to dance in
men’s blood, the cha-cha, the polka, the tango, the rhumba,
hard, fast, angular dances or stomping dances or slow killing
dances, the murder waltz, I want to mix it up with killing right
next to me, on m y side; it’s hot in my heart and cold in my
brain and I ain’t ever going to feel sorry; or I’d take one o f them
boys and I’d turn him inside out and put something up his ass
and I’d hear him howl and I’d expect a thank-you and a yes
m a’am; and I would get it. D on’t matter how dangerous you
feel, all the danger’s to you, so it’s best to settle down and end
up back inside your stupid fucking walls that you wanted so
much; alone, inside the walls, a Valium maybe or a ’lude so
you don’t do no damage to yourself; love your walls, citizen. I
want them bruised and bloodied but I don’t get what I want as
m y mama used to tell me but I didn’t believe her; besides I
wanted something different then; her point was that I had to
learn the principle that I wasn’t supposed to get what I wanted;
and m y point was that I wasn’t going to learn it. Y ou don’t
name someone not-cunt and then betray the meaning and
make them fit in cages; I didn’t learn it, fucking bitch o f a
mother. It’s a rainy night. The rain is slick over the cement and
on the buildings like diamonds dripping; a liquid dazzle all soft
and rolling and swelled up, like a teardrop. It’s one o f them
magic nights where the rain glow s and the neon is dull next to
it; like God lit a silver flame in the water, it’s a warm , silver,
glassy shine, it sparkles, it’s a night but it ain’t dark
because it’s a slick light you could skate on and everything
looks translucent and as if it’s m oving, it slides, it shines. It’s
beckoning to me as i f God took a paint brush and covered the
w orld in crystal and champagne. It’s wet diamonds out there,
lush and liquid, I never could pass up the sparkle, it’s a wet,
shimmering night, a wet, dazzling night; but warm, as if it’s
breathing all over you, as if it’s wrapped around you, a
cocoon, that w ispy stuff. If there’s acid in your brain
everything’s fluid and monstrous bright; this is as if the acid’s
out there, spread over the city, the sidewalks are drenched in it
and the buildings are bathed in it and the air is saturated with it,
nothing’s standing still and it is monstrous bright and I love
the fucking city when it’s stoned. Inside it’s dull and dry and
I’m not in a constructive mood and there is a pain that runs
down me like a river, a nasty, surging river, a hard river, a
river that starts up high and races down to below falling more
than flowing, falling and breaking, shattering; it’s a river that
goes through me top to bottom; the pain’s intractable and I can
barely stand it; it’s not all jo ie de vivre when a girl goes