I’ve been with you guys from day one, I won’t leave you now …
We never let our enemies know when we’re leaving, you don’t give them a timetable …
That’s why it’s a secret …
I need water, ice-cold …
I need it in my favorite jam jar, but where is my favorite jam jar, haven’t had it for years, not since after the Chinatown shoot …
If I had my favorite jam jar I could bear it …
I’m leaving here because I can’t bear it …
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I’ve lost my Donny once and I won’t lose him again …
I tap the barrel of my revolver on one of these hyperpressurized and ceaselessly gabbling heads, who knows what they’re saying, I can’t make it out …
A playful tap and nothing more …
I need my water, my god, my god, can’t you see that, the Dog King, can’t you see, I’ve lost my Donny once, I won’t again, the Dog King needs his water and his Donny Rumsfeld …
I tapped the hyperpressurized heads …
One, five, two, four, three …
The sound of those heads, an anodized and hyperpressurized resonance, and with each tap a rising Doppler whine …
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I poured myself a jam jar of water …
The heads cried out …
The Doppler whine of the resonant heads rising and joining the Doppler whine of their voices …
They cried, You think because yYY #6 SWR#.A},C XZCS
because you’re gulping down water that you’re among the living …
But when you number the dead, you must count yourself among them …
Among the dead …
When you number the dead, count yourself …
An explosion rocked the room …
The heads detonated, first one head detonated, then they all did, I ducked for cover behind the note taker and I was saved by the note taker, by how everything that was detonating went into the note taker, not the Dog King …
The table blew, sheer pressure of the Iraqi heads …
It all just blew …
A moan rose from the Sunnis and Shi’as and Kurds lying in pieces across the floor, I heard the heaps of gears and wires, levers and dowels and bolts rattling and settling, this was all that remained of the Sunnis, Shi’as, and Kurds, that and human flesh, too, the room coated with skin and brain, but I could not say who among the delegates had been flesh and who machinery …
We never know …
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We never know, when confronted with the Sunnis, Shi’as, and Kurds, who’s flesh and who machinery …
Through the void where there’d once been a wall and a window and my easel paper, I saw the burning city, and far below I saw Donny Rumsfeld …
I saw a cab, and Donny Rumsfeld inside, talking to the cabbie …
He paid the cabbie, tipped him generously, then he was out of the cab and patrolling the streets …
There he is, he’s dressed himself in the uniform of a soldier, tiny below on the street, he’s walking among the American and Iraqi troops, I want to be at his side …
I tried to hold it in my head, I’d called my sister, then Jack<Q?PCOAR 3.A@6A#</ }UR5Z.PRC/ WO@^/ CI@@QE^O4E}C.?E6 XOQ#>AUPCXO}I
There was trouble coming from Jack
I called my sister again
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Had to call her, had to let her know
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let her know, then call Jack, tell him, Please, don’t give my sister any trouble, but first I have to get out of this place …
A speech …
A jingle, then a speech …
First the jingle, then I started in on the speech …
The beautiful future, a piece of my heart, I was gladdened …
The rivers and valleys, the wonderful mountains, the majestic people …
This future of hope …
This, this what this future of hope …
dawning slowly, over the years, first realization, rituals not as the servants had insisted with what seemed even then an oddly jocular, ironic tone, shameful secrets that must at all costs be kept from my parents, second realization, parents played their own part, offered a basic sketch, types of activities the servants might partake of with the subject, the subject how I imagined myself named during such negotiations, third realization, my parents laid out maneuvers, timing, precise degree of pain, number of candles, tensile strength of silk, angles of hip and bone the subject to be worked through, fourth realization, years later, servants, too, victims of my parents’ perversity, lesser victims, goes without saying
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both lamps fallen, paintings in shadow, sepia tone long gone, only the chandelier 120 feet above our skulls, the chandelier will not fall, this I can
goddamn chandelier, fragment of Baccarat crystal, patterns of blood spray on Limoges, your blood, not fatal, I assure you, can see from here you’ll be OK. So then every night, goddamn chandelier falls. Vast crowds, ovations, perfect Obie trap, h,CSM PR4OAQWW E6PWCWPQ^#W4ZOCS/
each night stellar faggotry, a falling goddamn
splice and continue, crack the skull, search for hand-crank
special staircase, first cellar to thiASCX#SCR<W6CIUWMZXCSW>/
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A son confined fourteen years to cellars, but third, fourth, only, a fifth, a sixth, perhaps, I build them for him, the deep house
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he will never, before that night, have set foot there, second cellar
life of cellars, but never second, never, never no sight of you, not for my
stamped your tickets, you steamed away, the mountains, the blizzard, fifty feet under, your Tonya strapped stove to torso, dragged it through the Pullman to do away with the life inside her, she failed, only damaged herself, won’t make it, I fear
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