LIKE JAZZ IN THE MEMORY, BROKEN ON CHRIST'S
OWN JUICY BACK
'I am passing oil tanks. They ring the highway
like airfoils or dream-bubbles, squat and square.
I do not understand them, nor how they've
gotten there. I am obsequious to a fault, yet
these take all my time. To think, I try. This is
yet all very new to me. It was, way back, when
Arthur Bremer shot George Wallace on that
very hot day in a Maryland shopping mall
parking lot, that I think most of my energy
fell away - this modern day, I realized, was
nothing but shit and offal; old ideas again,
washed up like blood and scum on a really
bad beachhead of foul garbage and crud.
And yet now no one admits to remembering
a thing. I go on. When I first came down from
the mountain, it was on Hidden Valley Road,
a single turn off Emmanuel Way. I stretched
my limbs to feel what 'human' was like, but felt
nothing. This world blazed like a headache.
-
My first mother's name was Mary, as was my
second. Signifying nothing, just a name, I took
it all to heart anyway - as if I'd had the winning
hand in some luckless bastard's game of cards.
And then it suddenly turned into a million things;
other names and meanings: Tito, Titus, Orpheus,
Raimundo, Attila, Zavrotnick, Mandelstaum,
Cohen, Zapruder, Lauder, and the rest. I called
a cab and this Arab guy managed to drive me home.
He said little, all the way his radio blaring some
reverential Allah bullshit hum. He parked and I
pierced his heart with my glance. It gave him an
immediate other Life. And, yes, he apparently
was very grateful - emptying his pockets and
giving me all the money in his till. Fortunate me.
-
The jar the genie came out of is now on
double-lock and key. No nomads can have
it and police guard it night and day. I am in
speechless mode, just thinking of what will
happen anew when I am dead and gone. The
stories, my God, all those stories again.'
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