The Naked Warrior

In The Company
Of Cannibals

By
Thomas Cater

Canto I
A tall and naked warrior -- a savage god with a regulation steel pot and army
issued M-15 caduceus -- strolled through the bullet-ridden, bombed and bloodied
jungle. He was a noble lord, a sanguinary baron feasting on the corpse of war and
loving the warm-blooded wine, the sauce of every memory.
The bomb craters, the arms and legs, the fried dogs and bloated bodies of
children roasting on the violent altars were the sweet meat of memory, the source of
dreams inspiring stiff and blossoming erections and rich emulating ejaculations. Life
was an implosive burst of passionate prose and well-directed violence, a multiple
orgasm exploding and drowning the dream of peace.

Cass was not a warlord, not in the Government Issued traditional sense of the
word, but his impulsive behavior would have never occurred to the geniuses of war.
Such brilliant strategies were born of the moment by hopeless men, men who saw in
the faces of those about them the countenance of death, or the emptiness of despair.
No one, friend or foe, could explain the reaction of those who participated, nor could
they have imagined the equally bizarre response of those being slaughtered.

It started in the unconscious and labyrinthine chambers of his mind and made its
way through the dark night of desperation. Moments before the assault, Cass
unsheathed his knife, slashed viciously at the ragged remnants of his clothing, until
they fell from his body; then he filled the air with a maniacal howl.
The sight of his naked body leaping gracefully as a wild animal over the wire and
bamboo barriers contained too much of myth and lore. They-- the enemy -- were filled
with incredulity. They could do nothing but watch and observe while carnage was
inflicted on the confused and hapless ranks.
His bold initiative so inspired the company of hopeless men that within seconds,
half-naked warriors were leaping from every bomb crater and trench. With teeth
gnashing and weapons blazing, confusion reined. In a matter of minutes, enough men
had breached the barricades to destroy the shattered force. Fascinated by nakedness
the damned stood by while the invincible band sliced them to pieces.
Only one casualty was reported: the inspired leader of the charge had been
wounded in the cheek of his left buttock. It seemed a small enough price to pay for the
discharge that waited.

1
 Canto II
Pigeons beat their wings against the air, while meddling doves cooed. The roar of
traffic bleated on the street below. The cacophony of sounds rattled through the
buildings corridors, curled up and died in dusty corners.
The khaki shirt chafed his neck. Cass sighed deeply to free his mind from the
charade of endless thoughts. No one, however, noticed his despair. He was ignored
and scorned. They could not see the scars; they could see only the privates dismal
stripes, He would have fled the confining corridor if it were not for the likelihood of a
discharge waiting beyond the sequestered room.

He lit a cigarette. It was the first of the day. He intended to smoke it upon
returning to the sanctuary of his isolated room. Conditions however had changed; a
return to the ward was not anticipated. Release was imminent. A small green
canvassed bag at his side contained the shattered pieces of his life.
He indulged the simple pleasure, dramatizing each puff as if it were his last. He
could not see beyond his next thought without paying tribute to the gods of Tobacco
and Caffeine. The ash of his cigarette fell upon the floor the same way libations to the
ancients were spilled upon the earth. Indulgence in rituals was essential to the
maintenance of mind.
He knew nothing about life or its expectations. The few pleasures and brief
encounters he celebrated in the past were seldom granted freely, only painfully
conceded.
The cigarette burned to within a half-inch of his lips. The warm glow of the ashs
tip came close to searing a nostril hair. It was not like bygone days when Camel and
Lucky Strikes were field-stripped and the remnants thrown into a can to percolate. A
hit of tobacco juice injected into a vein was a deadly rush. He would have much
preferred that to the gathering tribunal.
When they called his name the sound echoed through the hall and rattled in his
head. The hearing, they said, would take less than ten minutes. He barely knew or
understood the disturbance his name created. When he heard it spoken in a sober voice,
he could not answer.
Im not that stranger, he would have liked to say. Im not that grotesque being
whose pores secrete quantities of thin oils and have turned me into a loathsome grunt.
He knew his tormentors would not stand for that kind of talk. It was not what they
wanted to hear, not important to know at this time the nomenclature of his vagrant
soul. It would only confuse them and make their life more difficult to understand, not
that they really wanted to understand. It was a bother to concede that he might have
had reasons they could not fathom. This was part and parcel of the ceremony, the
routine, the jettisoning of flotsam that touched his past.

He was instructed to sit at a pivotal point in the room, a fulcrum to balance their
heavy weighted words. The room, the world, and the air he breathed rightfully
belonged to them and not to him, or any of his kind. He occupied a position where
everyone could see and judge his motives. They could not conceal their loathing for
his disregard of dress codes, the scandalous scuff on his shoes and indifference to

2
regulations. Insignificant breaches disturbed their sense of right and wrong and only
aroused distrust. The three members of the tribunal were granted a wide-ranging 180-
degree view of his troubled soul.

Someone hed met earlier approached. He wore a smile that differed from the
others. It was as if flesh-eating authoritarians had devoured his identity. His heart and
brain were required to live in their shadow. He conspired to prove that enlisted men
were incompetent. Life had true meaning only for those engaged in the manful art of
war. It was also their intention to prove he was not qualified for anything but death.

Would you state your name and rank for the record, please? the thin smiling
and slightly balding major asked.
Cass ... Caleb Casablanca, Private, and added, And you are?
I am the one asking the questions, the major replied with a note of whimsy.
Cass concurred with a nod.
They call you Cass, is that correct? the major reaffirmed.
Yes, sir, Cass, he replied, As in Casablanca.
Casablanca, as in the Moroccan seaport?
No, as in the movie; I was named after a movie, Cass said and smiled. The lips
on the sitting judges turned ever so slightly into a friendly but weary smile. The
inquisitor concealed a derisive frown and focused on a neatly manicured thumbnail.
Your mother must have enjoyed that movie very much, he commented, though
it was his intention to compromise his mothers integrity.
Yes and no, sir. I was conceived during a matinee performance of that movie
nine months Cass stopped speaking and gazed at the floor. Nine months before I
was born.
The major ignored the misdirection and continued. You know why you are here,
dont you? asked the man who was beginning to look like Woody Allen in an
unkempt uniform.
Cass nodded and tried not to convey a willingness to confront. He did not want to
be misunderstood or mistaken for someone he was not.
In the future, would you please not shake your head but make verbal responses?
Cass nodded again and offered more of a smile, which could have been easily
mistaken for a grin. He licked his lips as if to indicate he too believed such an
excessive display of collaboration was unnecessary. Cass laced his fingers together
and began to squirm in the soft discomfort of the brown wooden chair.
We are looking for answers, the mans thin face stated. We know for a fact
that you and several other armed combatants removed your clothing during an
extremely critical mission; is that correct?
Cass nodded and remembered the invocation to respond verbally. Yes, yes, that
is correct. The officer seemed pleased with the progress they were making. He turned
and smiled at a trio of other faces seated behind him. Were you ordered to disrobe?
Cass grinned. I dont recall being ordered to do so, sir.
May we assume that it was your decision and yours alone to not only break
ranks but did so while completely nude and out of uniform?
I think it would not be incorrect to make such an assumption, sir.

3
 The officer nodded. Do you know who the first man was to disrobe, or who led
the ill-fated charge?
Ill-fated? The words did not apply to the situation. It was a historic blitz even if
several of the hardened men were nearly castrated; the gods of gonads in the afterlife
would not be so judgmental.
I dont know, sir. Most of the others were scattered far and wide for me to see
who was first or who was leading.
Officer Woody smiled and bowed his head. Did you recognize anyone
immediately in front of you?
Yes, sir, Cass replied.
And who was there?
The Asians, sir, they were all there; the flatheads and Chinks; Charlie, his aunt
and the yellow horde.
Did you get a good look at the flatheads and Chinks? Did you see Charlie and his
aunt?
Oh, yes, sir; they were all there, every blasted one of them, dressed in their
Sunday best.
And then what did you and the other combatants do about it?
We wasted them, sir; put them down and out of their communal misery.
Put them down?
Yes, sir, put them down properly.
Did they put up a fight?
Not much, now that you mentioned it.
Did you put any women and children down?
Hell yes, sir; they were blazing away at us with their pieces, sir.
The women and children?
Yes, sir; especially the women and kids.
Were their any survivors?
I think so, sir, but once we started, we went through them like a hot knife
through butter.
And what happened after the shooting?
I dont know if I can recall what happened after the fight. I can say for certain it
got pretty quiet.
The major sighed and turned his back to Cass. We have been advised by allies
that there were no armed combatants in that village, only women, children and old
men, and there was no resistance on their part. Many women and children were not
only brutally assaulted, but some of the victims were also topped off.
Cass shook his head and moved uneasily in his chair. Topped off, sir? I dont
think I understand the meaning of that phrase.
Topped off, Private, raped, physically assaulted.
I think we may be talking about two different villages, sir. The village I was in
was hot. They had lots of firepower, lots of slants poppin up out of holes in the
ground around us, and the women were heavily armed, too. It took all we could do to
get up and at em.
The officer offered Cass an 8x10 photo. Does this look like the village we are
discussing?

4
 Cass grinned. Its kind of hard to tell from a picture, sir. One village looks pretty
much like another.
Would you look at the bodies in the picture and tell me if they are men or
women.
Cass studied the print. Looks like a little of both, but I still cant tell for sure.
Does it also appear as if some articles of the womens clothing have been
removed?
You got much better eyes than I do, sir; I cant tell men or women, one from the
other.
Did you molest any of these women, Private?
Cass was silent.
Did you hear the question, Private? Did you molest any women?
Molest, sir? Why would I do that if Id already topped em off?
Did you have sex, Private, with any dead or living women in that village?
Cass was thoughtful. I dont think I could do something like that with dead
women, sir; but I do know some boys who would; but I dont think I could. At least, I
dont think I could.
What if I told you, Private, that we have witnesses who say they saw you and
several other naked men bearing arms and raping and mutilating the dead bodies of
women and children.
Cass shook his head and leaned back in the chair. I cant believe that, sir, and I
think I would know. None of us would have done something like that.
None of you? Are you sure, Private, that none of you could have done that?
I know I couldnt have. I dont know about the others, but I couldnt have. I
couldnt rape and then mutilate a woman, alive or dead. Besides, I was having too
much fun
Did you say you were having too much fun, Private?
Yes, sir, fun. After dodging bullets all day, I was having too much fun giving
them back.
The officer turned and walked away. That will be all, Private. You may return to
your quarters.
Sir Cass said in a whisper.
Please step down and return to your quarters, Private, one of the sitting judges
ordered. Your CO will be in touch with you.

Canto III
Cass moved from the chair toward the door. It seemed an incredible task to put
into words the feelings and overpowering emotions that had launched him out of the
shell hole. The memory of living and hiding in stink filled holes with the blood and
gore of friend and foe splattered all over his clothes and face had caused a change in
the way he viewed his life and the lives of others. He couldnt begin to explain how
the simplest decisions suddenly became involved and complicated and required all
manner of silent and personal rituals and ceremonies to absolve and purify his mind
and heart.
When he got right down to it, it was those absurd and sometimes redundant rituals
that he performed which neutralized those excessive doses of bio-chemicals that

5
sizzled out from all those internal glands and ratcheted up his fear or courage. He
knew he wasnt far from requesting a boon from those fat little Asian deities whose
tiny statues were crammed into every woodland nook and cranny wherever he roamed.
The pious gods of the West seem to be outranked or lack the proper credentials to
provide absolution and indemnification in the East. The only thing left to do was try to
induce some kind of chemical coma and thats exactly what he did.
He closed his eyes and focused his mind on things -- not necessarily inside his
head -- while the wounds in his body were keening for attention. It was only then
things would begin to happen. Sometimes, even though his eyes were closed, he could
see right through his lids and knew where he was and what was going to happen in the
worst possible situation.
He could curl up and sleep in the tiniest hole and think his blood and heart into
beating and moving so slowly that others thought he was dead when they tried to
awaken him. Sometimes his skin would pucker up hard and scaly like a lizard, almost
as if it were bullet proof. So keen were his senses that his mind began to believe he
could dodge bullets if called upon to do so.
His tongue, when he thought about it, felt thick and dull. He knew the condition
had nothing to do with talking his way out of madness. The tongue and words were
antithetical to the work of slaughtering ones enemies, which is why warriors in the
past removed the tongues of their victims, roasted them on open fires and offered them
as a sacrifice to the cantankerous and fat little gods. So the tongue meant a lot to the
gods, once it was silenced.
Sometimes a fire would ignite in the territory just behind and a little above his
testicles and he would begin to burn like a spark, a little fire in his gut glowing and
growing brighter. That fire he knew could also make his dick hard under the right
conditions, and if he werent careful, it would set his mind and tongue ablaze.
He knew that every man, woman and child was basically weak and tired and
silently wished they too could slip out the back door and put all the pain and suffering
out of their lives by hiding in the woods. But the secrets of the universe never revealed
themselves to people unacquainted with pain. Suffering was the essential quality that
prepared the psyche for the spirit quest. A quest that if ignored would only result in the
enslavement of the soul.
He also knew that it was equally important to survive. Whatever it was that got
inside of him wasnt going to let him slip carelessly away. He knew he was going to
live, but also worried that he might be looked on as a coward for not dying with his
friends, who werent really his friends or very good at surviving; they were only
strangers he ate and slept with. He didnt know when they stepped out of his life, but it
wasnt something that mattered anymore. He learned to live without depending on
them and their communal disrespect for their lives and the lives of others.

When it all finally came together, it was liberation day for his soul. He soon
discovered that he could catch bullets in his teeth and spit them back. He was still
screaming, but it was no longer the scream of a blood-crazed banshee, but the high-
pitched wail that sounded like the fat lady in a very famous opera that could set the
internal organs of her audience all atingle with her voice.

6
 As he ran through the fields during the mission, he could remember the lines of a
great poem, and he could see his fallen comrades, like shattered columns lying on
the ground and it made him feel like a god to be able to see what God knew and what
he expected from men who conformed to His will.
God was not a blue-eyed, white bearded lover of daisies and butterflies and
sparrows, but a hoary mean old bastard that often devoured the things he created if for
no other reason than to shit them out again and start all over. He was a little like a
Jewish stock broker, buying and selling randomly, loving the action, the money, but
knowing all the while it didnt matter one damned little bit. It was just a way to stay
alive and remain a player in the field.
Cass ran free as a naked jaybird, and when he drew close to those who smelled
and looked different, the knife seemed to know what to do on its own and with very
little prodding on his part.
Someone, somewhere along the way, as he covered the earth in giant strides,
grabbed his leg and brought his progress to a sudden halt, begged him to lend a
helping hand, cure his wounds and make him walk again. As if he could make a
difference in any one elses life, or remove the shards of metal that had penetrated his
lungs, or draw out the hot blood, anguish and fear that had somehow taken root and
clumped in his heart next to the metal lodged in a broken bone.
Whats the matter, friend? the demon/god asked, knowing the matter was the
same no matter which direction he walked in this forest primeval. Have you fallen,
and you cant get up? He knew it was not the right thing to say, but wouldnt a man
rather die with a smile on his lips than pure and utter sadness and regret melting his
heart and life away?
But the mangled friend was not amused. He had a strong hold on this his only life,
too strong, Cass thought, and he knew it would only leave him worse off than he could
imagine. He looked up with angry but also frightened eyes and shouted: No, you
damned fool! Im lying here because I enjoy the smell of this latrine.
Casss mind felt elevated, like a panther crouching in the bough of a tree looking
down upon a crippled defenseless springbok, ready to pounce, to claim another victim,
cut his throat and rip out his tongue. At the moment, he was this stealthy creature in
his mind because he had survived, though he could have just as easily caved in and
embraced death.
He thought it peculiar that friend was so determined and not the least bit ready
to concede and accept what others were having thrust upon them, a quaint and early
demise. The others did not struggle or resent their fates. They were quietly accepting
the fact that their days and hours were numbered and they were all about to embark
upon that final joyous voyage that so much had been written about and yet so few
knew.
There is something inside of me, tearing me apart, the wounded man said in a
way that made Cass doubt his own convictions.
Youve been courting the wrong kind of woman, Cass murmured. Miss
Destiny is no ones whore, he said. When I saw her smiling at me, I ran screaming
naked through the woods among the dead and fallen lying on the forest floor.

7
 Destiny? The man replied, with a painful snort and giggle in his throat. What
the hell are you talking about? Have you gone mad? What has that got to do with
anything?
Cass was actually thinking about the short fat black little pigs that had been killed
by friend and enemy alike and roasted over fires in shell holes, but he had forgotten
the formal name and identified them by the sounds they made, much the way any
primitive man would have done.
We are all oinklings, Cass said. Stupid little oinklings rutting around in the
earth, willing to kill or die for others for the meager little truffles we seek from the
land, which fall far short of sustaining us.
But the fallen young death-defying god lying on the ground had already passed
his time. His grip loosened on Casss leg and before he could say anything meaningful,
it was all over. Cass looked down upon him and said, Whats the matter, friend, has
the goddess, Guan Yin, ended your suffering and taken you into her gentle arms and
soft bosom?
It was not the most appropriate thing to say to a GI, but more than likely, it was
the right thing. Guan Yin was the Asian goddess of mercy. The pretty little brown and
yellow Asian girls -- all rosy pink and moist between their legs -- always carried little
ivory statues or pictures of Guan Yin in their pockets, looking very much like the
Virgin Mother of Christ, the mother of gay Telemachus, and the bride of Frankenstein.

Canto IV

Those young and lovely maidens were more ferocious fighters than the men, who
carried similar icons of fat and smiling Buddhas. It was not as if they, the women,
were more fearful, which they were not; you couldnt get more frightened than you
already were. And it was not as if they feared rape or sexual abuse; rape was a walk in
the park, a Sunday picnic compared to 12-inch steel blade lacerating your gut.
Cass could not fathom what made all women more dangerous and violent then the
men they were trained to love and serve. With men, killing was a blood sport, and too
much blood eventually soured their disposition. A little killing made a man horny, but
too much killing made him sterile. Men would eventually give it up -- for as long as it
took to start all over again -- and return to their wives and homes to make babies and
raise cabbages. Women however, once they started killing, never seemed to get
enough. The stench of killing to a woman was like a sweet fragrance and she wore it
with pride not shame.
Asian women were different. You couldnt trust them to exercise a certain degree
of predictability. They could love a man for a day and a dollar and stick a knife in his
back or in his butt on a whim, depending on which was the most accessible. It must
have meant a great deal for women to fight that way, but Cass was not able to
penetrate the veil mystique that disguised and separated the motives of men from those
of women.
Some deep thinkers on the subject have suggested in the past that men were
blessed with physical strength to carry on warfare for a short duration, but women
were cursed with the psychic strength to endure a constant state of warfare without
ever relenting, which is why the fighting is left to men lest it fall into the hands of

8
women and never end. Then again, those views and opinions were becoming vague
and distant memories totally unrelated to the present. They were thoughts buried so
deep in the annals of conscious history that they may have been dreamed away by
some naked aboriginal hunter, who didnt know any better.
The only thing Cass knew about Asian women with any certainty was that when
you encountered one of those tight-assed little two-holed freaks you had better make
sure she was not packing anything sharper than a chopstick. A man could empty a full
clip into one of those skinny little bitches and turn his back, and she would more than
likely sit up and stick a knife in his ass.
The First Commandment for mankind since primitive warfare began was to make
sure that all women were stripped of their clothing and required to move about stark
naked. Cass had acquired the cautious habit of cutting the buttons off their pretty
blouses and britches, and binding their lovely almond-shaped eyes with his
government-issued snot-rag as a precaution.
He wanted to make sure their hands were kept busy concealing their little birds
nest by holding their clothes in place and couldnt see to lob a grenade or a sharp knife
in his direction. It amused a few of the more conscientious ass-wipes, but no one
complained. It was the only way to guarantee there were no lovely assassins lurking in
the shadows or creeping up from behind with a sharp surprise concealed in their
package.
Cass also knew better than to take an Asian woman prisoner, which explained
why he was still alive and not pushing up daisies. If any female dropped or stumbled
into his path, he thoughtfully accessed the possibilities for sex, and if they werent
good, he sent her packing; it was just that simple. If they knew how many moaning,
half-starved, sick and injured women hed sent back to their destitute villages for R&R,
they would have been glad he was bringing up the rear. He knew he had to show them
some kindness, or they might come back twice as pissed and finish him off
Tiny little girls with bright shiny eyes and no fuzz on their peaches also tracked
men down at night on corners and dimly lit streets, slipped their delicate little hands
into a mans pants, plucked out his daisy and sucked him dry for a handful of pocket
change, while slant-eyed mothers and grandmothers dragged men off the streets and
gave them their pubescent children to despoil, then they would lay awake nights
dreaming of how to kill and dismember their ungrateful foreign benefactors.
It was his golden rule for survival: Release children and women of childbearing
age and send them home to their ravaged villages to tend to the wants and needs of the
spirits of their dead ancestors and their recently savaged loved ones.
It had also been his personal and private mission to liberate young and beautiful
women from their miscreant governments and nearly invisible husbands, while others
were burning and pillaging their villages, killing their children and grandparents, and
destroying their crops and livestock. If liberating a teenage Asian mother with a
newborn child conflicted with foreign policy, what else were men born for?
Was it any wonder the people who worked the land wanted nothing to do with the
macabre murdering rapists who denied responsibility for the pain and suffering they
created? Were a few candy bars, CDs and comic books suitable compensation for the
lives of their brothers and sisters? It was one of the reasons why little Asian boys and

9
girls lived for nothing but the pleasure of cutting an honored guests throat, or poking
into any one of a variety of vital areas in a combatants body.

But that too was an echo from the distant past, ancient history now. He had been
advised by military experts, the top brass and hard-core sergeants, not to waste time
boasting about all the kindness and charitable acts hed showered on people who
werent accustomed to Christian charity and didnt know how to say thank you in
English. As if it were that easy to flip a switch and make the memories of corn-holing
all those soft round luscious bare bottoms go away.

He was reputedly a warrior of sorts and had more important things to do than
think about how to protect ones only remaining packet of toilet paper while being
overrun by a division of starving and maniacal yellow people who would carve you up
in little pieces and make a savory gravy of your blood and guts. GIs still missing in
action? Hell, they arent missing; theyve been turned into Asian poop.
It was a disturbing fact to realize that the sum measure of who and what he and so
many others had become over the past three years amounted to little more than a
bunch of erotic and despotic memories of trying to make intimate contact with people
who were intent upon gutting you for willfully violating their country and their bodies.
Seems like every person he met was steeped in the right reverent and ancient skill
of killing. It had become an easily identifiable not too unpleasant fragrance in the nose
and a look in the eye that theyd all come to know; men and women, boys and girls;
everyone was dancing and singing to that delightful and enchanting tune. No wonder
death was so popular.
It was a shame that people were so willing to accept reasons to hate with such a
formidable vengeance that it caused them to grow thin and old and die of cancer of the
soul overnight. They spent their days fighting and firing at the helicopters that
descended like vultures on their villages, while spraying fire and damnation down on
their heads from the heavens like messengers from the gods. At night, as the dead
bodies cooled, they fought among each other for rice, garbage, soiled rags, and an
occasional unexploded anti-personnel grenade they hoped to deposit in the front seat
of an army personnel carrier.
After all was said and done, the demi-gods who ruled the earth, the brass and the
war-mongering capitalists feasting on red meat and wine in distant Olympus, said it
was nothing to lose sleep over. It was just another dry and dull, dumb and dutiful job.
They -- being the ones who calculated the number of dead, the dollars spent, and those
who would eventually decide who had won and who had lost -- claimed however that
it was also one of those mystical paradoxes, a grand and glorious job, an opportunity
to rid the world of ideas that had become a weight on the wheels of progress and social
justice.
It was, they claimed, a job to die for. No sacrifice was too great to make for the
pure physical thrill and spiritual joy of slaughtering people raised on remote continents,
or depriving their families of life, limb and happiness. These encounters of a violent
kind were killing in its finest hour, done on an international scale with little or no
regrets, government-sanctioned blessings and bonuses, and hopefully a pension you
could take to the grave or live off the rest of your miserable life.

10
 Canto IV

Cass was remanded to a small vacant house outside the base. There were six cots
in a single room with a small kitchen and a dining room, He was the only occupant.
Hed complained a few times about overcrowding in the ward and how listening to the
whining voices of others had given him a headache, but he was alone now, and silence
didnt sit as well as he thought it would.
A drowsy psychiatrist interviewed him once a week; he would inveigh against sex,
love, marriage, war and the future, but never asked the right questions. After ten to
fifteen minutes of hackneyed conversation, the psychiatrist would fall asleep at the
dining room table that also served as his desk.
Cass would eventually wander back to his book or the game of chess he was
playing against his phantom self. It was not a game that held his attention. A man can
only hold out against himself for so long, before he lends his weight to the dark side.
In this case, there was no other side, only surrender, if not to a color, then to a personal
vice or preference. If he chose the dark side, unearthly powers prevailed. And if he
chose the light, he was doomed for ages to seek answers where there were only
thoughtless questions. Cass was unable to differentiate one color from the other. He
surrendered his will to the kings and queens and allowed them to Deicide their own
fate.
When he and the pudgy psychiatrist talked about the infectious psycho-social
problems transmitted to veterans of Asian wars by their host victims, Cass was assured
that his neural pathways were functioning normally and he seemed to be responding
favorably to rehabilitative measures. The good doc felt confident that he was
successfully integrating his newly acquired identity with those fragmented slivers of
personality that had been sheered off by others outside his sphere of influence. Cass
wondered if rehabilitation had anything to do with the pills he was taking, or was it
more related to the occasional visits and detestable conversations they both disliked
and would have preferred to ignore.
The shrink was pretty sure he knew all he needed to know to make a clever
diagnosis. Cass was borderline, with less than an average chance of resolving his
dilemmas, which were non-specific. It was a foregone conclusion however that he
would wander through the corridors of time and eventually waste away on the avenue
to nowhere and despair. His chance for modest success in any field that required
intellectualization or commitment was about one in 1,000. It was also unlikely that he
would last long in any job or human relationship, and could look forward to second-
class citizenship for the rest of his uncharted life. Amen.
Cass however would never allow the opinion of an ill-informed army quasi-
psychiatrist get in his way of Holy Communion with the universe, which was another
major aspect of his culturally flawed and fragmented personality. Neither was he
willing to concede that his hopes and expectations for sustained sanity beyond
pogroms and genocides were so precariously constructed.
His social infections, whose symptoms included an over indulgence in food,
spontaneous outbursts of sorrow and regret, plus an affinity for grandiosity and yellow

11
pussy, all of which threatened to clog his heart and arteries and soften his mind, were
mainly a by-product of PTS, post-traumatic stress or syndrome.
In the words of experts and specialists, who took all of ten minutes to render a
diagnosis, the nerves that wired his body together were relatively unimpaired, and free
from neural afflictions. However some inexplicable brain configuration was wreaking
havoc with the wiring in his lower extremities and randomly releasing hormones that
generated muscle spasms in his nether regions and also encouraged the arbitrary
release of massive quantities of testosterone to his brain, especially while sleeping,
which resulted in frequent and intense erections.
The only relief he could expect to find for the muscle spasms in his legs and feet
were hot towels on his legs and soaking his feet in hot water. The testosterone
overload in the middle of the night, experts advised, was something that every red-
blooded American male would be lucky to incur. They raised only one cautionary note
that portended the eventual desiccation of the hormonal spring, since it seemed to have
a penchant for malfunctioning.

To manage the imbalance, Cass worked out in the gym and ran the quarter mile
around the track in eight minutes flat. The exercise however did not help him sleep or
prevent him from getting lost in dreams, which occasionally led back into dark forests
where trees that stood on mass graves bore strange fruit that bled when you ate it. And
it did not silence the sounds of laughter he heard in the darkness, nor did it prevent
him from noticing how insidiously hands on the wall clock moved when he was alone.
On occasions, he swore he could feel the cold blood in his arteries coagulating
and making its way slowly to his heart like sludge in a drainpipe. Day by day the
cisterns and conduits deepened, and his desperate and dogmatic thoughts, which were
the point men in his awakening, struggled to stay reasonably alert before they just
drifted off. The waste of life and time and meaningless excuses added a cumbersome
weight to his unpacked baggage.
The rain that fell upon the streets and into the dust of the drill field had nothing
better to do then raise old memories of strangled bodies of babies floating in flooded
rice patties, where their parents had abandoned them to the will of their gods, rather
than watch them slowly starve to death, after the liberators grown tired of the blood
sport returned to their home-grown cabbages and queens.

The image of lovely bright-eyed shiny faces of the youthful girls he held in his
arms as tight as a serpents coiling bliss in the heat of a black panther night crept into
his mind, and his great desire for the touch of an unspoiled child turned to regret, and
then to deep regression.
He drifted through a quiet time in the soft gentle darkness that seemed to obscure
his view of the past. It did however leave a ragged scar upon his smile. His days were
firmly fixed in a frieze of unsung glory and sterility, and a badge of ugliness warped
the image of himself he discovered lurking in the mirror.
Each night he dreamed they lashed his naked body to a tree. He watched them cut
strips of flesh from his back with sharp knives, a Chinese/Asian punishment called
lin chi, or the death of a thousand cuts, which was reserved for the most
incorrigible offenders. He listened to his own screams and waited his turn to die.

12
 The old women in the village gathered around the fire and watched and waited for
death to claim him. They whispered to each other in their curious tongues, which he
clearly understood: This warrior is not the child of a mortal man, they said, He can
only be the son of a wicked god.

Canto V

The tireless and eternally curious sun peered into the darkness of concealed places,
sliced through the partially drawn venetian blinds and fell in zebra-striped patterns on
the hillocks of crumpled sheets.
Cass blinked and gazed -- a silent giant head in the midst of the swarming cosmos
of dust-oppressed air, a universe of microcosmic galaxies in search of cognition, while
an unnatural stillness held the room in abeyance. His eyes wandered among the
displacement of meaningless things: The cigarette burns on the bedside table choked
on memories of napalm and searing hot wounds; the cankered paint-encrusted
windows ached of age-old guilt and repentance, and the view beyond the distorting
glass was a vision of loneliness.
Objects otherwise dead to the world appeared to discover life. All things
possessed a breath of history. Chess pieces with souls and hearts and consuming
ambition were impatient to ride across the board, to knight, to baptize, or to slay. Even
the glib expressions on their carved wooden faces revealed intent.
His thoughts expanded in the silence to include it all. Words formed at the base of
his tongue and images gathered round about, but he could not give them back their
lives or purpose. Silent silhouettes, single dimensioned shades, a conspiracy of
unfamiliar faces drifted from one side of his cerebrum to the other, took shape and
threatened to break ranks. They made intimidating gestures, but he ignored their
presence; he would not close his eyes to their appeal, or grant them status. They paced
slowly out of range like hungry, disappointed ghosts with open, unsatisfied mouths.

Canto VI

While he slept, they came in a dream, black as thunderclouds darkening the skies.
They ate the fruit of the land and lay on their backs rubbing their bellies. They cried
out in joyous unison thanking the great god Loci who lived in the sky.
A man took up a shovel and smashed the disciples of Loci and they cried foul!
That winter the man died and was buried. After the worms finished their feast, they
too lay on their backs and rubbed their bellies and prayed in joyful unison to the great
slimy god Oligochaetes, who languished deep beneath the cool dark soil. And when
children came and plucked them from the earth and threaded him on sharp hooks and
the worms cried foul!
Cass opened his eyes and wiped the night sweat gathering on his brow. Lord,
God Almighty, dont ever let your tail slip though a hole in the sky, because I will be
waiting and watching.

Canto VII

13
 He often wondered, as he lay in bed paying tribute to the gods of Copulae and
Fornicato, or more often, the grand Master Bator, that if he had never seen the painting,
The Naked Warrior, would he still be alive to experience pleasure? Or would he
have died and his body left to sweeten the soil for some long-suffering farmer to sow
vegetables in. It was enlightening to consider that he owed his life to art.
It offered him his greatest pleasure to recall the dumb-founded expressions on the
faces of the men he slew as they gazed at Penis Erectus. Every time he thrust his blade
into their hearts or lungs, he felt his joystick quicken and quiver. If the skirmish had
lasted a few moments more, he may have entertained a visit from the divine Orgasmo.
He delighted in the cleverness with which he had exercised his sex. The fact that
nakedness had saved his life gave him an invincible pride in his body. Where field
jackets and combat boots had failed, flesh had flowered and prevailed.
He took Stickus Prickus in his hand and found it pleasing to the touch. It was as
small and insignificant as the Teeny Weenie on the miniature copy of the Farneso
Hercules that sat on the rusting metal desk of the psychiatrist who never asked the
right questions.

Canto VIII

The River Lethe flows through every Post House restaurant in the country. The
souls within wait not for a greyhound bus, they wait for life. They are playing long
shots, betting on distant cousins and in-laws, the kindness of strangers and
compassionate friends. They sit and wait for a gas-guzzling cross-country Noahs ark
to transport them from their plight, to carry them across a stormy sea to a place of milk
and honey, where others have gone before and found relief. They gamble on the stars,
on when one will explode and illuminate the night so they can see where to begin
anew.
They look upon the driver not as a man but as a messianic deliverer, a Noah, a
redeemer. When the bus arrives, steaming and hissing from its exhausting flight
between cities, the dispossessed form a line and timidly ask their deliverer what time
they will reach their destiny, the Promised Disneyland of destiny, or a friendly place
to die. Like the boatman Charon, he is impatient with his cargo and smacks them
roughly on their backsides. They receive snarls instead of answers. His job as a
deliverer is only a job. Not a job to die for, but one where he can occasionally kick
some ass. He takes their tickets and they scramble on board. The more experienced at
being saved have grown accustomed to his indifference.
The feeling of unworthiness prevails; the passengers feel like Catholic
communicants who have gone to Communion with sin in their hearts, or allowed their
sharp teeth to touch the host or -- god forbid -- enter into the body of Christ wafers so
deliberately placed upon the tips of their tongues.
The relatives have stopped tying yellow ribbons around oak trees, and the old
girlfriend is living with a guy emblazoned with biker tattoos. You cant go home too
often. The old folks have stopped answering collect calls and the late night knock at
the door is completely ignored.
Everyone finds a seat and tries to get comfortable. In Columbus, or Charleston, or
Chapel Hill, fate will provide a better place, maybe a job that pays a little more than

14
minimum. A man will get a second chance to live, and a woman can make a clean
sweep of the past. The young will learn something they didnt know before they took
to the road. The myth thrives.
Charon grapples with his oars and hydraulic doors; he counts noses, scratches his
balls and slides into his honored seat behind the wheel. Above the closing door, a light
flickers dimly and reveals a sign:
ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE
The seats of the bus are worn smooth. A girl with long thin legs has taken mental
refuge behind two books by Dostoyevsky, The Dispossessed and The House of the
Dead. While she reads from one, the other occupies the seat beside her. An unshaven
man, recently liberated from previous commitments, celebrates by drinking strawberry
schnapps from a bottle. The odor perfumes the bus. An old army sergeant tells lies to a
teenage girl, who tries desperately to get her hair up in curlers before her armpits emit
pheromones that will awaken and arouse the sleeping muskrat in his pants.
Cass listens to lies that stumble and fall first over one and than another. It is a
curious chorus of concealed desire and deceit, a duel between Othello and Desdemona:
O the hell hello and Des demon on a; or, Hello Demon.
A nun struggles to reach the closeted restroom and fights to close the door. A
young sailor kicks off his shoes and props his feet on the front seat. A blast of hot air
carries the odor of unsavory wool sock sweat through the bus, while the southern heat
outside begins to find its own way in.
The bus lurches and stalls, roars, lurches again and backs out of its narrow aisle.
A carnival of color explodes on the tinted-glass windows. Bizarre and mysterious
men and women cruise the crowded sidewalks, searching each others depthless eyes.
Men, whose complexities vanish at night, reveal themselves for who and what they are
destined to become: Effeminate, wino, tramp, porter, hack, hustler, hooker and wild-
eyed tourists wander along the concrete beach of streets.
The bus moves like a woman in labor. The sounds of horns, breaking glass from
beer bottles, whistles, shouts and profanities fill the air. A streetlight changes color
and the bus screeches to a halt. Garishly dressed night strollers stop and stare as the
bus idles. Like a panting dog; it is impatient to resume, to get back on the scent. It has
miles and hours to go and jackrabbit spirits to kill. Punks with spiked hair stop in the
crosswalk and glare at the driver; Charon waves them by with a flick of his hand. The
light changes and the bus strains, intense enough to field a hemorrhoid, races through
half a dozen blinking yellow lights and dives ferret-like into a tunnel. It rumbles
through the darkness and emerges on the street once again with its cargo of humanity
intact.
The driver settles back in his seat, chews a stick of gum and focuses the rear-view
mirror on the legs of the girl sitting behind him. She turns the pages of the Book of the
Dead, tightens her skirt under her legs, and holds the hem in her left hand. The driver
stops chewing whenever she turns a page.

Canto IX

The seat beside Cass is empty most of the trip. A girl with straight brown hair and
pimples sits beside him for awhile. Her tight jeans smell of soap and a subtle whiff of

15
perspiration. She wears white sneakers without socks and a blue-jean jacket that has
seen a better day. She produces a cheese sandwich wrapped in cellophane from a
brown bag. She eats slowly and with deliberation. Her eyes shift the second before she
takes a bite and then her teeth clamp down tightly on the bread. She returns the
sandwich to her lap and chews silently as she gazes out the window. She wears a high
school ring on her finger and her name is Mary; it is printed in red ink on the toe of
her sneakers.
Across the aisle, the old army sergeant runs his fingers playfully over the young
girls bare arm. She slaps his hand gently, but her tone and purpose imply firmness.
He makes light of her gesture and continues to test her patience.
The girl with the thin legs smiles at the driver through the mirror and plays with
the edge of her skirt. The driver grins and rolls a cud of gum around in his mouth,
licking his lips. It is such a tedious drama that even Morpheus, the son of Hypnos and
the god of dreams and slumber, is lulled into a state of forgetfulness.
Little Mary red toe offers Cass half the toasted cheese sandwich she is cradling in
her lap. He smiles and shakes his head.
I cant eat anymore, she says. I think I may be lactose intolerant.
Cass stares at her and then at the cheese sandwich and wonders why she
purchased it in the first place. Whyd you buy it?
I didnt buy it, she replies defensively. Some lady gave it to me in the
restaurant.
Cass takes the sandwich and puts the neat Post House-trimmed edge in his mouth.
Thanks, he says, sinking his teeth into cheese and cold toast and tearing off a
tasteless segment.
He demonstrates further appreciation with a nod. She watches somewhat
embarrassed as his mouth and teeth demolish the meager offering in three gulps.
When he finishes, she turns again toward the window.
Mary wants to talk, but she cant think of anything meaningful to say. She hates
small talk, especially with young males, who want nothing but to grope her and stick
their clumsy fingers between her legs, or anyplace else they can reach free of charge.
She made the mistake years ago in junior high of giving in too easily to the first few
guys who tried. Since then her life has been one of long-suffering regret.
There is however something different about Cass, even though he devours food
like a starving Ethiopian. There is something strange and different in the way he
glances at her and every one else on the bus. She cant say for sure what it is, but it
holds her captive.
Where you going? She finally asks.
Home, he says, How about you?
Back to school, she replies, and then quickly adds, Wheres home?
In Ohio, He replies, smiling, while he brushes toasted crumbs from his shirt and
lap. She waits, nodding, while he runs his tongue over his teeth in search of leftovers.
Where do you go to school?
Ohio U, she said. He nods, and she nods in reply.
College girl? he remarks.
She doesnt reply, only nods.
Wish Id gone to college, he says.

16
 She continues to smile. Where did you go? She asks.
Into the army, he replies.
What did you do or study there?
Study? he replied. I studied how to kill, fire a weapon, to field strip it, clean it,
take it apart and put it back together again.
You didnt specialize? She asks.
He thought about it for a moment and slowly shook his head. I got pretty good at
killing, but I wouldnt call it a specialty.
She took a deep breath. You actually killed people?
Deader than a rats ass, he replied, wondering all the while how dead a rats ass
could get.
She exhaled heavily. Thats scary.
What do you mean? he replied.
She hesitated. Scary, you know, killing someone.
Just killed a bunch of people who were trying to kill me, he said. You would
do the same thing if it was happening to you.
Thats just it, something like that would never happen to me.
He stared quietly at her without speaking.
I mean, were just about the same age; I cant imagine something like that
happening to me.
He smiled softly and turned to the window at his side. Its hard to imagine all
right, until you do it a few times, and then its just like any other job, like washing
dishes, or driving a truck, except its fun.
She gave his words a moments thought. So youre kind of like Ulysses, on your
way back home to Penelope after fighting the 12-year war?
That war was long before my time.
Wars are wars. She said. The only difference is that youre going home on a
Greyhound bus, and Ulysses went home on a ship.
Did his ship have a name? Cass asked.
If it did, Homer never mentions it.
Homer? Oh, yeah, Homer, the Greek guy. Its hard to imagine a man writing a
book that long ago. There werent any publishing companies then. And once he got it
written, what could he do with it? Do you think people could read then?
And she began to recite:
Homer, they say, was blind and could not see those lovely faces
gazing up into his own, reflecting the joy of his dream.
Yet he was gifted with eyes that could follow the gods to their holiest places.
I have no vision of gods, not of Eros with love arrows laden,
Jupiters thundering death, or of Juno his white-breasted queen.
Yet I have seen all the joy of the world in the heart of an innocent maiden.
Did you make that up? he asked.
Of course not, she replied. It was written by Joyce Kilmer, the same poet who
wrote Invictus, and Trees.
You like poetry? She asked.

17
 Sure, dont you? But I cant imagine a blind man writing a book 3,000 years ago
and people still read it today. I also think its a shame he didnt mention the name of
Ulysses boat.
Ulysses had six ships, the girl replied. And they all sank, or were wrecked on
the rocks.
He wasnt much of a sailor, was he? Apparently old Homer didnt know much
about boats, either.
The gods were angry with Ulysses, she replied. Some were jealous and some
were just playing games with him.
Is that right? Do you think its possible that gods play games?
Well, not The God, with a capital G, but the tiny little gods that we get
involved with in our personal lives, I think they like to mess around a little bit with our
minds.
Cass smiled. Tiny little gods, huh? I think youre right. I think the gods have
intruded in my life on many occasions, but I dont know which ones they were.
Which gods, or which occasions? She asked.
You think weve got more than one life to live?
She sighed deeply and leaned back in her seat. One life, two lives; little gods, big
ones; its really all one and the same. You cant separate your life from the lives of
others, and you cant weed the gods out of your life, and you cant bribe them to come
in. Theyre all one and the same, even though we, and they, go by different names.
Just like people, were all one and the same, even though we call each other different
names.

Canto X

The bus made a rest stop and transfer in Tennessee. Cass climbed out to stretch
his legs. He took his satchel along. It contained his back pay and a small stack of fifty
dollar Treasury certificates he had purchased on an army savings plan. Not far from
the bus station, he passed a sports bar with attractive young women in tight fitting and
skimpy shorts and tank tops standing on the sidewalk hawking their wares, doing their
best to lure men into the pub, much the same way the Sirens lured Ulysses and his
shipmates onto the rocks.

"'Come over here,' they sang, 'renowned Ulysses, honor to the Achaean name, and
listen to our voices. No one has ever sailed past us without staying to hear the
enchanting sweetness of our song - and he who listens will go on his way not only
charmed, but wiser, for we know all the ills the gods have lain upon the Argives and
Trojans before Troy, and can tell you everything that is going to happen all over the
world.' (Samuel Butlers Homer).

Come on in, boys, the girls outside the bar cried. Were open all night. The
women are plentiful; the drinks are cheap, and the popcorn and peanuts are free.
It would not have been the same if Homer were here, he thought. If he too were
blind, it would have sounded much more inviting.

18
 As soon as they took Cass inside, the big-breasted women parked him in front of a
color TV. The barmaid removed her top, exposed her breasts and the siren disappeared
again back onto the street.
Cass spent money on drinks for a young woman with black hair and green eyes.
She had thighs soft as butter and breasts incomparable to any he had ever seen or
touched. It would have been an insult to refer to them as jugs, but sure enough that
was her middle name; Jugs.
She was also in the company of another woman with hands like a prizefighter and
a swagger in her walk. Her skin was ruddy and rough. She wore a black patch over
one eye and bragged about the size of her clit. When she laughed or spoke, her rasping
voice cut deep. She had a scar between her nose and upper lip, which made her mouth
as inviting as the cusp of a broken bottle. The locals in the sports bar warned Cass they
were a couple and both could be bought for a single price. One would not sign on for
a romp without the company of the other.

Canto XI

When he awoke the next day in a room not far from the hotel bar and bus station,
the amazons were gone. The loose change he had sprinkled on the belly of the fickle
goddess called Jugs, and the paper money he had paid for the pleasure of poking the
Cyclops rugged bottom were gone. His lighter, an elephant skin belt he had purchased
in an Asian novelty shop and an empty leather key case that matched his satchel were
also missing. A ballpoint pen and pencil set, someone had re-gifted him, a going away
present, and a copy of a Hustler magazine hed lifted from the sports bar were also
missing.
She, whos name he had found deserving of veneration, had left a pair of bent and
disfigured cigarettes on the color TV with a note that said, If your up for another
session, you can find us at the Tropical Lounge,. the name of the bar. He made a
mental note of the name and promised himself if he ever returned, he would organize a
pilgrimage.

Canto XII

From a distance of time and miles, the apartment dwelling Cass called his
mothers home had acquired all the charm of a hastily constructed Catholic diorama
for the recently converted hopeless. The mystical power of faith and belief in the
supernatural however no longer prevailed.
It was present when his grandmother died, when his grandfather died, and when
his teenage sister died. He had buried dogs and cats and pigeons in the yard, which
was not far from the graveyard where the bones of his nearest of kin were interred.
He had felled trees nearby that were once occupied by Genii, dug pits and
recovered extraordinary treasures, strange bugs and trash belonging to generations past.
He knew the land and its spiritual presence.
He had in the past also experienced moments of comfort and satisfaction, while
wallowing upon the speckled blue and white rug that covered the living room floor,
even though it was now badly worn. He had deflowered two maidens on that carpet,

19
written the opening scene to a Star Trek segment when he was 16 and tried to sell it to
TV producers, but they were not impressed. He frequently fell asleep on that carpet
during two-hour segments of the Hallmark Hall of Fame and the Twilight Zone.
The bookcase with his treasured volumes was still a comfort. Dusty and in
disarray, they were the shipmates and mentors of an orphaned past, even though they
were no longer potent weapons in his psychic duels and dramas.
. He thumbed through his books on Buddhism, Transcendental Meditation,
Vipasana Meditation, The Heart of Awareness, and his high school commentary on
the Ashtavakra Gita. His personal notebooks and diaries of musings called, Me,
Myself, And I were books that had -- if not nourished quickened his spiritual life,
even though he had since discovered thousands of reasons to refute and abandon their
teachings.
The cheap prints and unrecognizable originals that he had acquired through
various and often devious means were no longer beacons of light in his deepening
cerebral fog, for those things too no longer belonged to him or his psychic world.
The burnt and exiled coffee pots and the unimaginative mugs, with clichd logos
burnished on their sides, were stained and chipped beyond repair. The old oak doors
separating two rooms, and the room full of wrecked antique furniture, like ships
battered and gone adrift during a voyage, were no longer a matter of concern for his
understanding of the old world he had since abandoned.
The odor of unattended garbage, like the breath of an ogre, was keen; while the
house gathered smells about it that diluted the gravity of sanctity and dutiful diligence,
and enriched it with cool and silent indifference.
His bedroom, with its glaring white walls, was a kind of a birthing ward for
dreams and concepts yet unborn; the kitchen with its uncoordinated yellow stove and
white fridge; the ceiling to floor sliding glass door that leaked when it rained and
permitted the winter wind, a howling rampaging wild creature from a frigid wasteland,
to enter undisturbed; were slowly re-configuring the ghosts from his past.

Canto XIII

When she saw him standing before her in the apartment hall for the first time in
years, she wept and fried chicken. Reconciling with the past always led to one thing
and then another until finally tears would begin to flow and that would evoke more
memories of her sainted mother, her beloved and bellicose father, and her virgin
daughter. All had been dealt cruel blows by the immortals that lived in the clouded-
with-mystery land beyond.
She worshipped the memory of her daughter, who had lived and died without
fault, without once cracking the impregnable shell of her virtuosity, which would have
made a fitting sacrifice for any of the old and time-worn gods.
While she wept, the phone rang. A voice at the end of the line proposed a trip to
the mall. She was sick with grief, but at the same time delirious with joy; she could
weather her tempestuous emotions and be ready in 15 minutes.
Cass finished frying the chicken, ate every piece with his bare fingers and went
directly to his desperately white, chastened and uncluttered bedroom, with less than a
half-bottle of Dago red.

20
 Canto XIV

Days later, while Cass was cramming a bursting plastic bag full of refuse in the
only available container in the basement garbage pit, his mothers beautiful young
pregnant neighbor snubbed him. She caught him stashing his trash in her can, which
was clearly a violation of building protocol. The can was indisputably marked with her
apartment number 217. He apologized and offered her the use of his mothers can,
even though it was overflowing. She declined the offer, smiled wanly without showing
her sparkling white teeth and carefully snuggled and tucked her gift-wrapped garbage
into a far and remote corner away from his invasive eyes and hands.
He invited her over to his mothers apartment to dissemble over a game of chess.
The corners of her mouth slipped down and around her lovely Arcadian chin and her
eyes widened. She didnt think so, she said. He tried to seduce her by offering an early
morning glass of honey mead, a wine so pleasing to the taste buds that even gods
found it a sacrifice too tantalizing to reject. But she only became more adamant.
He entertained the idea of telling her that he was a war hero, or a gladiator of sorts,
and that he had revealed his bare weapons previously to battle-hardened men who
gaped in awe at his manliness. He boasted that he would take pleasure in regaling her
with his adventurous stories of battlefield feats of valor, but she seemed to grow more
fearful and uninterested. He told her he would not harm her or her lovely daughter, nor
would he offend her dignity in any way. But color too quickly filled her lovely cheeks.
She touched her protruding stomach tenderly as if to imply that his words were
too low even for the fetus developing in her womb to hear. She drew up to her full
stature, crammed the lid down on her garbage can and left him alone and adrift in the
room full of waste: potato peels, egg shells, bacon rinds and milk cartons. When she
opened the door to leave, the ventilator kicked in and Cass senses were overwhelmed
by an effluvium of unsettling odors.
He followed her up the stairs to the second floor, but she hid everything from
sight. He was not fit to look at her heels, her calves, or the tricky network of tendons
quickening sensually behind her knees. He knew that when her husband came home
from his work of slaying gorgon-headed monsters, or beasts to beastly to be contained
in a menagerie, he would be advised. She would tell him about the outrage; he had to
be told. Then he too would think of ways to punish Cass. He would not say hi to him.
He would just go straight to his apartment in the evening and not speak or make eye
contact with Cass if they perchance should meet in the hall.
Cass decided that at the first opportunity, he would seduce their charming three-
year old daughter, possibly dine on her internal organs, lick her buttocks like an ice
cream cone, and cram a lighted church candle up her miniscule vagina.

Canto XV

He gathered up the coffee-stained cups scattered around the apartment and

stacked them in the sink. Then he searched the cupboard for a clean cup. He was
almost reduced to drinking out of a discarded soup can when he discovered a clean

21
pyrex measuring cup on the windows sill. He boiled water for more instant coffee
right in the cup.
A vine his mother had purchased sat withering on the sink. He poured a little
water over it and watched it spill out the bottom and into the drain. The plant ignored
his half-hearted attempts at resuscitation; it too was willing and prepared to die for
some greater glory. Life came too cheaply at times and too high at others. Dry and
desiccated, it had withered in patience awaiting Casss arrival. His mother did not
possess the skilled and gentle touch of a plant savior. She was more adept at sucking
marrow from the limbs and vines of those things that lived a quiet desperate life in
isolation and loneliness.

Canto XVI

The unnumbered, nameless days of paging greedily through old books for
forgotten lore, insight into the past, knowledge and meaningful direction soon turned
into a deep and solemn fondness for reverie, or staring out the window. The scenery
however seldom changed.
Every day a dark-haired girl pushed a stroller through the freshly fallen snow,
while a puppy followed stumbling on her heels. Fifteen minutes later a blonde girl
wearing ski pants and carrying a child in her arms would make the same journey. The
scenery never changed.
Day after day, since the first sun shattered the universe in a boiling explosion,
they have been parading beneath his window. It was a flawless and integral part of
existence, and a part of each and every man and womans life.
Cass watched as those curious female things deposited their eggs in the sand and
waited for the sun to warm and hatch them. He watched as they swam into the arms of
the jellyfish and into the bellies of sharks. He watched them pick lice from their
childrens heads and crack them in their teeth. He watched them scold the birds that
fought to regain their stolen eggs. He watched them rip each others throats apart with
their protruding canine teeth, while locked in a loving embrace. He watched them leap
upon the backs of serpents that were in the act of devouring their babies. He watched
them, with Neanderthal eyes, as they dragged saber-tooth tigers back to their caves to
feed and clothe the screaming things their curiosity had created.
They have changed only slightly in appearance. Their bodies are no longer naked
and covered with hair. Except for a slight curvature of the spine, they walk erect,
which reminds them that their natural position is on their knees, with their legs drawn
forward, and their buttocks raised a foot or so from the ground.
Their faces however have become remarkably delicate and reflect a spiritual
beauty that exceeds a mans ability to describe. Their looks are often compared and
associated with virtues and ideals that warm the blood of the species. But in their eyes
alone the truth of their being persists. Their eyes have remained savage. They search
and destroy with a glance. They are incapable of compassion. Their instincts for
survival are too great. They alone possess the clusters of life within their bodies. If
men were not available to impregnate them, then they would select from natures
menagerie another creature they could easily manipulate. They do not lend themselves
to the natural laws of the species. They adjust to any and all circumstances. They grow

22
horns, gills, or feathers in their pursuit of pregnancy. They impregnate themselves
with the wind, rain, sea, dew, sunlight, or with their own spittle if nothing else
succeeds. Regardless of time or manner, life shall beget life; it is her existence, her
nature, and her heritage.
She is deadly, but growing increasingly ignorant of the qualities necessary to
preserve and sustain a great species. She willingly accepts formulas prescribed not by
her own inner nature, but by the corrupt forces at work in an unnatural environment.
She relegates the problem of survival to a mate. She imposes sexual exile upon her
freedom, maiming her outlet for personal expression. She becomes enslaved and
inhibited through a lack of fulfillment and the acids of her discontent degenerate the
species. Each generation born to her is less inclined to survive as a free and
independent organism. Dependence upon one another becomes a sickness, then a
disease, and then a self-destructive plague. And the mother of the race, whose delicate
mechanism has fostered madness and degeneracy, smiles and smoothes the crumpled
locks of her defender, deliverer, husband, child and father, all the while plotting the
extinction of the species.

Canto XVII

For several months Cass lived a solitary life seldom straying far from the security
of his mothers home. He would lie in bed oblivious of the time. Upon arising, he
would drink cups of coffee and crash in front of the TV. Occasionally he would
eavesdrop on conversations in the hall, and spy or peep with binoculars on pedestrians
and occupants of other buildings.
On rare occasions, when the opportunity arose, he would attempt to seduce one of
the young housewives who lived in nearby buildings, but his efforts were insincere.
The only woman he succeeded in seducing was an obese red-haired divorcee with
three small children. The experience had such a disastrous affect upon his psychic
stability that he promised the lone gate keeper in his conscience that he would not
seduce divorced red-headed women again.
Cursed with an abundance of too much time and an over-active imagination,
Casss thoughts turned once again to the mystic cabalistic exercising of thought, of
turning the gross ambiguous grunting sounds of half speech into inscriptions of molten
lead. All writers, he believed, were mystics, even if they themselves did not believe or
understand. Written words were the means by which men divined the darkness, and
each book, no matter how redundant, was a psychic journey seeking alignment and
enlightenment. Each author a truth seeker embarking upon a perilous quest. Words
were for the mystic/writer what clay was to the mystic potter.
The search for understanding was not found in the forged words of others, but in
ones own use of the language. The writing of one mystic was a record of his own
perilous journey, and not the journey of the reader. If one would understand and
experience the cerebral synergistic journey, one had to be a writer/potter/artist and
able to chart his own mystical magical personal passage.

23
 Mysticism was not out there lurking in the pages of some ancient tome waiting to
be re-discovered; it was inside the mind of each and every man; and it twisted and
squirmed and struggled to be exposed.
A small child with a crayon and a piece of paper in his hand enters easily into that
state of mysticism, which is clearly recognizable. He believes the sketches he
produces are as real and provocative as life. The fledgling writer, with his first
atrocious script, believes beyond all reckoning that the words he has produced are
works of genius, because they do possess a fragrant mystical quality for him or her,
but not necessarily for an editor. The words and the craft come slowly, but the mystery
persists.
Mysticism is not what most people think. It is not something you can give to
others, or siphon through a text. It is not a chant or a mantra, or a jewel in the head of
a toad that will endow you with insight and magical powers. It must be realized as a
subjective and individual achievement. Priests cant lead you to it, nor can profound
teachers from the past define and explain the path. It is what all seekers have been
saying for centuries; it is a single way open to only one, and you are the one. It is not
something out there that is evasive or hard to understand or difficult to achieve. It has
nothing to do with religion or philosophy, only in the most remote sense of the word.
Mysticism is inside every man every minute of the day, and it is inside those who
share their lives and thoughts. But they cannot live their mystical experience through
you, and you cannot have your mystical experience through them. You can only have
your own; and every author can only tell you about his, but not how to discover and
live yours.
When a potter takes a lump of clay and turns it into a pot; or the artist takes a
canvas and turns it into a painting; or a writer takes words and turns them into a book,
that is the essence of mysticism. But when a potter produces pots by the dozen, or a
painter produces the same work over and over again, and writers write and print
forever, the mystical element dies, or it grows tiresome and tedious, because it was not
meant for all, only for one.

Canto XVIII

Cass suspected there was something unspoken concealed within struggling to be

revealed. He could feel the words forming inside, but could not hold them still in his
mind long enough to devour them and make them part of his shapeless life. He wanted
to say something astonishing that Chekhov would envy. Something that would make
the granite walls of Random House crumble, something that Playboy would beg to
print, something so brilliant and delicately erotic that the world would fall into his hip
pocket like a spot shot in a game of pocket billiards.
He wrung his hands furiously, stirred the maelstrom of ideas brewing inside his
head and gathered a chaotic chorus of random, fire breathing, death-defying starting
sentences in his mind. He burned them into a sheet of paper. In the miasma of
smoldering fumes and red-hot ashes, he attempted to write the great short story
masterpiece:
There were these guys No, There were these gals No, There was this
flaming asshole

24
 He stopped long enough to start over again, somewhere near the beginning, where
his thoughts began to fall apart:
I spotted the moon. Chalked up the tip of, Nunus Petunus, dusted my hands with
stardust, and sent the moon like a cue ball rumbling toward the center of the galaxy.
There would be a pause of a few million light years while I waited for the results of
the collision, but more than likely, It would not come within an eon of light years to a
single one of the tens of millions of visible stars.

That kind of a thought always served as an often stifling, bone hardening narcotic.
Itdevoured life whole and never gave a moments thought to chewing. Usually, a
thought like that could stop him dead. And if it were a grandiose enough idea, he
would faint straight away and drop over right where he stood. One clear night he lay in
the snow for two hours before anyone noticed his absence.
It pleased him to contemplate his own insignificance. It was not that he liked to
wallow in decadence; it was just that truly magnificent things, such as the universe,
tended to get into his mind and rip it apart with wonder.
When he was a kid, he could lie on the roof all night with his hammer in his hand
and not tire of gazing at the stars. He could live on Mount Palomar, eat astronomers
for breakfast and chart every star in the heavens, and still not know a damn thing about
himself, astronomy, or those other beings, who lived across the hall and galaxy from
him.
To Cass, the universe did not exist; it was too magnificent to existence. It took
greater faith for him to believe in the universe than it did to believe in God.
His prolonged presence however in this one little corner of the universe had
begun to incite disturbance. Everyone thought that while his mother was around, he
was living off her SS checks. But since she had moved in with an old and decrepit
boyfriend and left Cass to fend for himself, they began to suspect that his claim about
being a noted journal writer might actually be true, considering the fact that he had not
found a job or left the apartment for anything more compelling than a trip to the
supermarket. He seemed to possess all the obvious qualifications, despite the fact that
no one had ever read a single word that he had written, or knew of anyone who had.
They began to invite him into their plaster and vinyl abodes to share with him
their good fortune and familial blessings. He was not able to refuse. The breasts of the
young resident maidens and their mothers, he observed, were jutting poignantly in his
direction, and they were smiling bewitchingly at him on the stairs. They were far more
accepting of his eccentricities than they were before, and were curious to divine his
mythos and hidden image. They questioned him mercilessly about his work and past
publications. He spun a reckless yarn for their pleasure, which was filled with a ton of
untruths for them to tread upon and crush like grapes. The wine of his lies was
intoxicating, and he was permitted to glimpse their thighs and the dark and sacred
grotto that lay beyond, and other noteworthy objects dart concealed by foraging eyes.
Once again he was overjoyed and delighted to try his newly leveraged position as
a seducer of young housewives and their prepubescent daughters, who would if called
upon, also serve as bearers for the dab of petroleum jelly, once all was functioning
smoothly.

25
 Canto IXX

From his mothers second floor, two-bedroom apartment, it is possible -- thanks

to the flimsy construction, built-in design inadequacies, and numerous architectural
failures -- to participate vicariously in the lives of not just one or two other families,
but four all-told neighboring households. The family above, the family below, the
family adjoining the back of the dining room, and the family adjoining the small
bedroom.
On occasions, Cass was surrounded by a symphony of soft refrains or the
rhythmic cadence of bedsprings coupled with the often familiar bubbling, gurgling and
other pleasant throaty emissions. At other times he was surrounded by a holocaust of
profanity, physical abuse and mental cruelty that borders on degeneracy. On rare
occasions, he was confronted by the most bizarre of all lifes aural conspiracies:
silence.
Like cadavers or silent, motionless shadows, they lay quietly in their beds staring
absently at the ceiling waiting for the first outcry to occur. The silence becomes
infectious, unendurable. Mice can be heard scurrying through the walls and halls.
Someone in the back unit tiptoes to the kitchen, opens a drawer, sets the spring load on
a trap, and slides it surreptitiously under the sink. Cass can almost smell the scrap of
American cheese pressed against the bait lock. Then the anonymous killer tiptoes back
to the bedroom, crawls into bed, and curls up under the covers. Together, with
everyone else, they wait for the mouse to nibble his way to death.
If someone speaks in a soft whisper, it is as if they are sharing your bed. Suddenly,
everyone, including Cass, is embarrassed by the silence. They realize they all live too
noisily. Urine can be heard splashing in commodes. The pipes groan when someone
opens a tap. Even an occasional spoon can be heard clattering against the inside of a
cup.
A bed squeaks, a clock ticks, a phone rings, someone coughs, curses, laughs,
sneezes, or races toward the bathroom. Everyone is quiet while they speculate on what
will happen next. A sudden rush of water purges the commode. The steady hum of
water as the tank refills, and a rustle of whispers penetrate the walls like an invisible
auger.

Canto XIV

While brushing on his morning smile, the man who lives across the hall has
discovered a new cavity. He carefully removes the stray lint from his navel and places
it in the jar next to his clipped toenail container. He then pulls and rinses the molting
hairs and dandruff from his brush and flushes them down the toilet.
His wife exorcises the knots and rats from her hair, farts for fifteen minutes, so
she wont when she gets to work, then creams her underarms with deodorant, and
sprays her underpants with Lysol.
They kiss and dress and pat each other on their girded bottoms and wait for the
car pool to take them to their respective jobs. He to a G-8 position at the Department
of Health, Education and Welfare, where he pinches and pats the bottoms and breasts
of the women in the secretarial pool, and she to a G-4 clerk-typist position at the

26
Department of Motor Vehicles, where she giggles and blushes while the cops and the
clerks peek up her skirt and press their proud pinions against her robust ass.
After work they meet in a restaurant, where they join friends, drink martinis and
eat seafood platters and shrimp cocktails, while examining each others eyes for traces
of infidelity. Did he find someone new today? Did she meet someone else? After they
eat and drink themselves into a blind stupor and become oblivious to their own
feelings, they go home and play at being a good mommy and daddy to the dog and the
cat, while cursing the mice and the roaches and commiserating with the untold
millions of unemployed they read and hear about on the news and in the papers.
Once in the bathroom, she lets go with all the powder, provender, gas and
ammunition her delicate organs had been dutifully restraining all day long.
Embarrassed, G-8 takes the dog for a walk and watches with a benevolent smile while
the little beast deliberately shits in a neighbors yard and covers it indifferently with
his front paws. Meanwhile, back in the bathroom, G-4 is flushing and plunging and
flushing some more until the Brown broth floods the bowl and spills all over the
bathroom floor.
Then the man in the shower downstairs starts cursing and the family above starts
laughing, and the fire bell short-circuits and rings.
The firemen come and clear the building. They smell the shit and laugh heartily at
the man who lives with the woman whose shit is all over the floor and stinking up the
building that caught on fire because of a short circuit.
Later that night, G-8 takes G-4 in his arms, presses her beautifully cupped
buttocks against his tool while telling her all the while how fortunate they are to be
living in such a wonderfully civilized country, which takes such excellent care of its
federal employees. And then he climbs on top of her and makes a little baby inside of
her body with just a wee tiny drop of loves serum. She weeps because there is not
enough juice in his body to put her fire out, and she knows the baby inside her will
become her license to fuck indiscriminately as much and as often as she can, whoever
and whenever anyone passes within range of her hungry thighs.

Canto XX

The night, awakened by the first touch of light upon her deep purple mantle, took
sudden flight across the deep abiding waves that roiled the seas. Watching and waiting,
maternal darkness hid within the rocks and the hoary past gave birth to a sparkling
new day. Lights deeply penetrating eye split the dark heavy shroud open like a
surgeons blade and the golden rays of sunlight spilled across the sky. There was a
whisper of yesterday and a hint of tomorrow in the air, as the scampering sun
stumbled to its winged feet and sailed across the sky.
Cass watched the broad light stretch out, yawn and sprawl across the continent as
it thrived and expanded in the optic glory of warmth and color. All the wise and
rational syllogisms that affirmed reason and logic vanished.

The days and nights became equal in length. A vast solar system revolved like a
carousel some millions of light years in diameter. Thoughts rise up like misty vapors

27
and vanish in a breath. The nameless intelligence that haunts the universe comes to
grips with the ancient envy of being and nothingness.
Tiny synaptic implosions of thought react upon his brain like carbonated bubbles
of cheap champagne. There is a will in the wind and in the blades of grass, and in the
sunlight that filters through the boundless sky and enlightens his rabid warren of
words, and all his desire is intent upon consummating life.
An invisible army of dragons teeth soldiers, defeated of its forces, marched
through those early morning dells and vales to sow thought and surrender to
imagination. A wild, sweet anxiety tore at his flesh and a hundred thousand hungry
words could not elicit a more genuine concern for meaning than he in his thick winter
coat of repentance.

He tried to pull the warm burning tapers of his burning papers around him and
dissolve in literary fat. He stood upon the tabletop naked with a book of poetry in his
hand and urinated stanzas on the wall. The unedited pages of his stillborn book he
scattered to the wind. On the floor, in front of the TV, he curled up into a fetal ball and
dreamed the warriors dream, while the Late Show illuminated his soul. The neighbors
banged on the walls, ceiling and floors. He ran the garbage disposal all night, while
management encouraged him to seek employment as a hierophant.

Cass tried to seduce the young virgins that climbed the wet and slippery stairs to
his Olympian abode. He treated them with the dignity due an honored guest, and they
tried to sell him magazines. But nowhere in the entire world was there a more prolific
Model 17 typewriter hammering through the night and day, through blizzards and
orgies, and national conventions, and the over-indulgence of pure and public political
nausea. It was a regrettably and unforgettably long winter.

Canto XXI

The muse, Calliope, had spoken. She desired conformity of will. The shotgun
blast of sentences he had so faithfully coveted were no longer a comfort to her spirit.
The world had to be depicted in rhythmic cadence writhing. The little old men who sat
in the hollows of fallen trees, and the beautiful young girls dressed in Christmas
gowns of snow and Easter seals, and the crows with plumes glistening like hot tar, and
his hounds tooth suit were repugnant to her sensitivities. She spoke to him as if she
had spent a long weekend of debauchery in a cheap motel room with her cousin
Momus, who seldom had anything nice to say about anyone.
The gluttonous folds of excess sleep gathering beneath his chin and the spots that
fluttered before his eyes while climbing the heavenly flights of stairs to her boudoir
atop Mt. Helicon were no longer of mega-importance to the message his care worn
philosophy intended to impart

What is it you are trying to say, my little Musagetes? The voice asked of him.
He sifted through the cold dying ashes of inspiration for a hot ember.
What is it that has been troubling you all these cold dank wintry days? the
eldest of the nine tuneful sisters wailed. Why have you not been able to ascend

28
 to the heights where all creative work is accomplished? Why have you muddled
and groveled on your hands and knees digging in the old bone yards of
literature and on the French and Italian isles of poetry for lost Latin treasures
among those dead languages? Why havent you turned your eyes toward the
sky or inward and gazed upon the newly tailored soul weve outfitted for you?
Why have you not listened to the voices of the daughters of Jupiter and
Mnemosyne and waded in upon the new songs we have composed for you and
your rather picayune instrument?

Cass slipped into a foul mood and felt it mold itself around his mouth and eyes.
There was a subtle trace of poison on his lips. He could taste it and turned it into
brutish doubt. He could have cursed or said something unflattering to her, but he
preferred to savor the bitterness and let it percolate among his slavish thoughts.

Gazing silently from a window, he watched the snow as it began to fall in a slow,
gently molting fashion. Flakes as large as dinner plates descended listlessly from the
sky. There were no breezes to influence the fall, only an occasional warm breath of air
that buoyed them up to ease descent. They did not fall from a great height, but from
just above the arms ability to reach. They appeared magically and drifted among each
other clinging passionately to every object they touched.
It was not an obsessively driven snow. It was instead a loving snow, gently
caressing the earth and quickly being absorbed into its mighty warmth. It was a
fecundating snow, a cool vital seed vanishing into the oval egg-like earth. A brief kiss,
a moment of transmission, and then one after another, the flakes melted in a subtle
kindness, drowning the earth in soft wet lust, and then dissipating finally throughout
its hearty breadth.
If it had been performed as a ballet, it would have won accolades from those men
whose balls and brains were tightly bound in couplets of esoteric diligence.

Canto XXII

he shower of words that began to flow from some cavernous subterranean passage
before he had completed his morning ablutions made him distrustful and intolerant of
the slightest distraction. Cass paused absently in the middle of a not too-close shave,
while he pondered a thought that was about to coalesce into a phrase. The water
turned abruptly cold and the lather dried on his face before he could return the plastic
razor to his radiant cheeks.
He swiped away at the remaining lather, mounted painted Pegasus, his winged
steed -- an old roll-about office chair he had acquired from a dumpster -- fed the M-17
a single sheet of paper, previously unscathed by pen, pencil or crayon, and began to
create.
While inhaling the sacred smoke of Delphis fire, he dreamed the marmoreal
dream of fire prophets and drakes and discovered the path to mental pelf. While
ingesting the secret ingredients, he acquired a taste for the rare forbidden secret
knowledge invoked by marauding bands of intellectuals from gilt-edged volumes of
ancient and inspiring claptrap.

29
 A carousel of dazzling memories and reminiscences swirled dizzily to mind, the
way crepitating leaves of Autumn are rounded up and corralled like cattle by the lusty
dusty devils of October. Gryphons and geryons circled in a maddening vertigo inside
his head like bright colorful stars and bluebirds in a Disney cartoon.
The deep navel of the universe opened and the sweet fragrance of omniscience,
like a misty cloud, bathed him in its fragrant bouquet. As a bee is often deluded by the
seraphic scent of a flower, so to did Cass descend into the pistule and nodule of
eternity to discover a single fragment of self. Like the gigantic sons of god whose
footsteps carved the canyons and the seas, he glimpsed the immensity of time, gazed
upon the sublime machinery, and the wild ticker-tape of creation. He rent the veil of
objectivity and laughed hysterically at his now dead naked childs ambition to master
anything but his own imaginings.
The floods, the fires, the fomenting cauldrons of mankind, and all the blind and
dim-witted enemies of God and tomorrow vanished in a column of invisible smoke
that stretched from the foot of his bed and back to the beginning of time.
For one brief moment he was all but blinded by insight. The vision was too
magnanimous. He could not find his way back to the origin of the Word, or to his
mystic dream. Begotten in the mud, begotten in the light, Begotten in the jaws of life,
wrapped in Cains mortal shroud and savage nakedness, bound and gagged, and
trussed up like a Christmas turkey, he was carefully hung out to dry in mortal oblivion;
such is the fate of all men who screw with infinity.

He sprawled on the floor, stared at the ceiling and the thread-bare, speckled white
and blue robins egg-colored rug, which once provided him with a measure of comfort,
no longer seemed to meet a single need.
A man on TV was selling soap powder. A nymph-like pixie maiden hovered
seductively over the studio washing machine. She pretended to be interested in green
grass-stained and grimy overalls. While she taunted, nearly tempting, she cast a smile
Cass way. He pressed his lips in tribute against the picture tube to kiss her bum before
the picture vanished.
Once she had returned to her pixel palace, he turned the set off and kneeled on the
floor. His eyes discovered a dime-store reproduction of Napoleon astride a horse with
a hand in his vest. He envied the men who knew the depths of Desires end. Such
men were able to direct their passion into greater undertakings: the conquest of nations,
planets, stars and virtuous women of various coats and colors.

Canto XXIII

He made a fist of his hand and tried to stick it in his mouth; it wouldnt fit. Hed
seen it done when he was a young man setting off on legendary voyages every Friday
or Saturday night, action-packed journeys in search of dragons and demons to slay,
poon tang to savage and ravage, which usually entailed exorcisms of passion, love
and/or affection from the bodies of women bewitched or cursed by Freudian Genies
and warlocks.

30
 Once hed seen a young man his equal in strength and curiosity suck a condom up
into his nose and pull it out his mouth. Such skills were beyond his frail ability to
master.
On another rare occasion, hed encountered a distressed young lady filled with
such great passion that during a tryst in the backseat of his Chevy, he lost control of
himself and a magic ring, which hed purchased from a fortune-telling gypsy. His
groping fingers were imbedded inside the toothsome maid, but the ring was not
recovered! It was the kind of great love and passion that eventually found its way into
urban legends.

Things hadnt changed much since Cass was sixteen. He still couldnt keep it
down long enough to get a good nights sleep, or spend a productive hour dreeing his
own weir. Once again he felt it creeping, crawling, prowling, sniffing up and down
the inside of his trousers like a wild dog. It was awake again and throbbing a steady,
angry tattoo on a hungry cannibals jungle drum.
He filled a water tumbler with blackberry schnapps and sprawled on the sofa.
Under ordinary circumstances, it would have taken the better part of a week to drink a
glass of schnapps, but tonight there was something in the air.
He emptied the glass in a few hefty gulps and filled it again. Within minutes, he
could feel the delightful little blackberries colliding pleasantly inside his head with
mutant bio-chemicals released from maverick and unregulated glands; it felt as if a
carnival or Mardi Gras had come to town and set their tents up in his frontal lobes.
But he was alone, and it had been months since hed tasted the flesh of a virgin.
Though selection of vestal vessels was a complicated matter and usually required
considerable cunning and conniving, he was approaching the point and time in his life
when it didnt matter. He tried to convince himself that he was indeed sufficient
stimulus for all his sexual, psyche, social and cerebral associative needs, but he knew
better. All he really needed was the resilient flesh of a young woman radiating warmth
to make his mind, spirit and body coalesce.
Total emersion in warm flesh alone however could not unlock the wellsprings of
imagination he wished to tap. Amused by his own attempts at self-deception, he
continued to imbibe strangulating draughts of schnapps. He tried to sublimate the
reaming corkscrew sensations spiraling toward his third chakra, where the sun seldom
shined, while the schnapps pierced his groin with pussycat tongues of fire.
He could have pissed a painting by Picasso against the wall after the third tumbler
of schnapps; he could have passed a copy of Rodins thinker on the living room floor.
His organs were swollen and growing more massive with inspiration and libido, while
his balls were rolling toward his throat with a bellyful of salacious prose. He tried to
piss a blue-black stream of poetry directly onto paper. Unfortunately, his aim was poor,
and he succeeded only in spotting the blue robins egg heirloom.
He banged the keys of the typewriter with his staff creating a new argot, a black,
sleek and fast hollow ship of state to bear his phallusophical language to far distant
shores. It would provide a language through which all men could understand their
eventual penihilation.
He admired his own logic. The cyclopean philosopher became distended and
engorged. An expression of enchantment stretched tautly across its toothless maw.

31
 Cass apologized humbly for his dire intent. The bold one nodded in dubious
assent. It sniffed the air for the presence of the well of destiny, where all philosophers
dipped their gourds and drank deeply of the sacred waters, which without there would
be no tomorrows. Its absence was duly noted. Cyclops unstrung his splendid
instrument and returned his sharp arrows to the sheath. It was the call to arms and the
absence of an enemy to subdue that wasted the valiant warrior.

Canto XXIV

Cass bore witness to the withering of Cyclops strength and purpose. He watched
as it shriveled from a sizeable bludgeon to an effete pencil, until it resembled nothing
more interesting than a withered pear upon the ground. It was tragic, funereal, an act
against creation. To maim a penis, to deprive it of its bath in sweet immortality, to tap
its strength and pervert its natural urge -- which was to implode and thereby discharge
backwards into the brain to fecundate the mind -- was a sin against mankind. Only a
Jesuit could be so cruel as to make impotent a penis.
He sheathed his dagger, drained the last swallow of schnapps from his glass and
fled the apartment in desperate pursuit of a universe in which to sow his seeds and
stars. It was and has always been his and every mans mission to populate the universe
with wishful thinking and hybrid human beings.

Swiftly, as if in pursuit of a million falling stars, Cass sought the vacuous womb,
combed down ancient alleys titanic, shouting through Christmas halls of time, and
ranging with the gods immortal for his slice of love divine.

While in the garden of his mind her image bloomed:

Like a child lost and waiting, for a season past and ashen,
Somber, sad and soul misshapen, in her pageantry exhumed.
Waiting in a veil of summer shadows, and a mist of winter tears,
For a lover to come calling, to come crawling on his knees
To obscess her and possess her, to disrupt the flow of time.

On the street, Cass could conceive of nowhere to go to sate his cyclopean appetite,
or appease his less than intrinsic needs. Unlike other more ambitious warriors, he did
not have a Stygian stable of champagne pissing beauties sitting up all night in their
cloistered cells waiting for his footsteps on the stairs. He had only his native
intelligence to rely on, and more often than not there was not enough wind in his sails
to propel his sleek craft through the choppy waters of their discontent.
The lords of earth and air, which were all too frequently ignored by his insipient
offerings of maidens hymens, which never appeared on their sacrificial altars, did not
bode well for him when he sought to seduce the young and nubile lasses out to wet the
pants of Christendom.
His curious indifference and desperate need often relied entirely upon a subtle and
personal form of mysticism. When he spoke, he weaved an aura of other-worldliness
that sucked at their curiosity. It was perhaps foremost among most womens greatest
failings. His bizarre jargon was composed of cat entrails and voodoo type emanations

32
that stroked some unsated sexual taboo lingering close to the lingua of those who had
witnessed the emasculation of mankind by the universal sisterhood.
Cass words and conversation remained vivid and as disturbing as the public
manipulation of a wombats genitals. The pseudo-sophisticated sneered and whispered
pervert under their breath, while the young and enchanted crossed their legs and
folded their hands in the salaam position, and tucked them tightly between their legs.
After an hour of dialog filled with sexual innuendo, he began to feel like an old
warrior lashed to the mainsail of a sleek black boat as it sailed passed the Greek isle of
Lesbos, where Sirens passed wicked winds from their rectums to drive men insane,
lure their boats onto the rocks, and made them forget their purpose. He suspected these
young ladies too were also baring, but not sharing, their dilating assholes. All those
heavenly clad torsos whose anal sphincters were clenching cyclically together had
suddenly became more offensive to him than his loathsome dialog was to them.
It annoyed Cass that their delicate arms had not evolved to a more useful length.
They had apparently reached their evolutionary climax at the moment in time when
complete and thorough service to the organs of excretion prevailed. Those arms,
which he once believed were created by the sky gods to chaperone male members to
their pre-ordained destinations, were too short to provide meaningful service to the
extremities, and too long for providing service to the nose. They were however
perfectly developed to render unlimited service and pleasure to the will of the derriere
and that other ravenous appendage, which was capable of consuming, like a black hole
in the universe, all the spiritual light and energy that passed its way.
That is not to say that women were not capable of generating spiritual light, it was
just easier for them to steal it from men, who had stolen everything they had from the
gods, including their identities, and were always being asked to share everything they
made of it, or grew, or found, even though they were never given anything but bad
advice.

Canto XXVI

He was uneasy and squirmed in his chair. His scalp itched. Humanity was
encroaching too closely upon the bare bones of his life and invading his pores. An
unpleasant odor made its way too his nostrils and worried his tongue into silence. He
could no longer tolerate the indignity and neglect that came too casually into his life.
He escaped out and into the street, into the silent and holy night, onto the
lonesome sidewalk, and then down a back alley. The doubts that haunted him were
never far behind.
He had allowed hunger and impatience to turn him around, but when it came time
to act or react, he had preferred his own hallowed presence to that of any other. His
soul was still as chaste as a shadow cast upon a wall, but his mind was screwing him
out of sex. His meaningless little mind was trying to impregnate the universe.
Mind is unto itself; John Milton said. It can make a heaven of hell, or a hell of
heaven.
His thoughts and insights were well-oiled pistons generating possibilities, but the
equations were not adding up. Cass knew he had a perpetual hard-on suitable for
world domination, but he couldnt get it up that high if he stood on a skyscraper.

33
 He flipped his dib out into the open air and checked it mindfully. Its eye was
closed. For all intents and purposes, it was dead, but rigor mortis had not yet set in. He
grasped it firmly about the neck, dragged it to the brick wall of an Italian restaurant
and beat it unmercifully.
It was his intention to make it feel and know physical pain, than perhaps it might
once again seek pleasure. Creativity did indeed require a rigid discipline.

He slept with it that night, alone. It did not respond to his tender lucubration. It
did not appear to be concerned with his intentions. He smoothed its bruised and
battered head, and anointed its visible lacerations with a fungicide. His attempts to
revive and rehabilitate it were ignored. It too had become and alien appendage weary
of his self-mortifying disciplines. It too had independently resigned itself to suicidal
inactivity. He tried to revive it, stimulate it into action, but it ignored his attempts; he
might as well have been born impotent. It was like trying to pump life back into a
jellyfish. His one time barracuda refused to respond even to the most heinous and
degenerate contemplations. Not even his erotic Mid Eastern sex manuals could arouse
a twitch of desire. Again he apologized for the indignities it had suffered at his hands;
it remained motionless and unmoved.

Cass placed his pen and pad upon the nightstand in the event a dream served up a
useful phrase, and then he tried to sleep. He tried to erase completely the unalterable
fiction of each day, to eradicate from his memory the fruitless labor of his life. He
tried to forget about falling short of expectations and looked forward to dreams that
might improve his ability to reconfigure the lies engendered by his inability to
perceive reality.

Canto XXVII

Cass stood at the window and surveyed the plowed parking lot below his window.
Snow banks were heaped shoulder high. Children of all ages played on the mini-
mountains while they waited for buses to take them to school. Cars moved easily in
and out. The calm and quiet reserve of the suburban apartment dweller had returned.
They no longer needed to borrow their neighbors snow shovel, or for that matter,
their neighbor. The snow had been sufficiently restrained. The children had recaptured
the playground and the sidewalks cleared.
The trees did not suffer much from the icy blasts. A few dead limbs were shaken
loose, but the scene did not changed dramatically from past winters. The delivery
trucks were back on schedule. The milkman, the bread man, the diaper service, and the
garbage disposal drivers had all escaped the merciless assault of winters cold. The
wind still blew, but not like an avenging Fury.
Cass took a sip from the cup of coffee hed abandoned yesterday. It was so cold
and bitter he dare not swallow. He spit it carefully back into the cup and returned it to
the windows sill. Tomorrow hopefully it would taste better.

The lead bus rolled to a stop and the children formed a line. The teenage students
are an ungainly tribe of raw young savages with bright red blood coursing through

34
their cheeks. They know nothing of the civilized world nor human decency. They
know only their select and privileged ignorance and the emptiness of their insatiable
appetites. They laugh and shout as if tomorrow were a tale told by an idiot and they
alone possessed that knowledge. There is more venom coursing through their loins
than through the balls of Ammon.
The prettiest girls stand in front, while the awkward, saber-toothed boys stand
directly behind them gesturing hungrily at their plump little ankles and butts. The girls
board in a flurry of insults and lecherous grabs and giggles. Then come the hedons, the
spoilers, the riflers of fine and delicate objects of art, the boys.
They are grizzly and gruesome: green-toothed, hair falling over their eyes,
cigarettes dangling from their mouths, dirt under their nails and dog shit on their shoes,
they are boys. Weary of lechery and fighting by 7:30 in the morning, they still find
time for dirty jokes and insults. They will violate every sacred rite and ritual known to
mankind and throw themselves on the love and mercy of their parents in the evening.
Weary of revolution, lying, stealing, cheating and fighting, they will surrender, but
only until dawn of the next day. In them lives the maggot of the human spirit. They are
a worthless lot, yet those young kittens smelling of rosewater and taffy will lend their
sweet lips to their loathsome heroes daily. Only god knows what other violations are
permitted to occur after school when the young pagans are set free to prey upon the
defenseless.
The elementary school children form a neat single line, bang their lunch boxes
together, squash snowballs and flounder about helplessly in snow shoes, coats and
pants a season to large. A self-appointed monitor shivers in boots and a topcoat over
her loose cotton dressing gown. A scarf covers her uncombed hair and the odor of
buttered cinnamon toast and tea is still heavy and delicious on her breath. She wishes
only that the bus would come and relieve her of her frigid vigil. Her bashful young
daughter presses against her leg and smiles painfully at a group of small murderous
boys who have just armed themselves with snowballs.
The children cheer when the elementary school bus arrives. They fire a volley of
snowballs at the windows of the bus before they enter. The driver scowls a warning of
serious repercussions if they step out of line or create a disturbance on his bus.
They ignore the threat and scramble for their seats with their usual partner to
begin the business of the day by swapping sandwiches and cookies for fruit and candy.
The driver smiles warmly and waves at the monitor who has started back to her
apartment. He catches a glimpse of her white calf and speculates on the flesh
concealed beneath the topcoat.
With difficulty, he works the gearshift into low and starts off. The transmission
and clutch are also in need of work. On Washboard Road he puts the bus in second
and decides to leave it there until he gets back on the interstate. The road is so bad he
has difficulty steering. In an attempt to avoid a deep pothole, he swings the bus
quickly to the right. The soft shoulder gives way beneath the buss weight and slides
over the bank. The children scream as the bus tips over and rolls down the bank into a
backwash of mud, snow and water. Everyone on the left side is thrown to the right.
The trapped children scurry like mice toward the broken windows and open door.
Most emerge unharmed and run back down the road toward their homes. They are all
frightened and weeping. People appear from everywhere. An ambulance arrives and

35
attendants examine children who complain of injuries or cuts. The rest are sent home
with their parents. Only two will never go home again; the driver and the monitors
bashful daughter; both are dead.

Canto XXVIII

Cass visited the refrigerator every two minutes to examine its contents, which
seldom changed. There was an ancient head of lettuce, an ageless bottle of catsup, a
bunch of withered carrots, and a gallon of milk. He seldom ate, but often drank coffee
doused with splashes of milk.
Whenever he became restless, inspired, or preoccupied, he would sacrifice a
coffee pot to Kachina, the kitchen goddess. He would on occasions, let the coffee boil
away for hours at a time before the flame retardant handle would melt. On other
occasions, he would burn up entire coffee pots. Turning a flame on under a pot had
become an obsession. He didnt even want coffee and hed turn the fire on and walk
away. He would turn it on and then drink milk, or juice, or cola. He would turn a fire
on under a pot and listen from his room or bed as it boiled and burnt away. Hed put
on a pot for coffee and then order pizza and a container of coffee. Hed make a cup of
coffee and then forget and walk away. Three days later he would rediscover it and
drink it. The coffee syndrome had become a significant and important event in his
daily activity. He often wondered what it would be like to have a normal job like other
people vied for and one that that did not entail killing. Would he still be sacrificing
coffee pots to Caffeindish?

Canto XXIX

From the four corners of the earth gentle breezes came bearing fragrant gifts.
Their scented cargo was deposited near the tips of her bare toes. She wore a pink satin
dress and a ribbon in her hair. The color of her lips matched the color of her dress, and
the flowers matched the ribbon in her hair. Her eyes gazed unblinking at the back of
Lincolns neck.
Cass sat in a corner of the room beside a potted palm. He avoided contact with the
other mourners. Officially, he could not mourn. Not for the dead or living. But this
was the child of a neighbor he had once dreamed of seducing, including her deceased
daughter.
They want you to be a pall bearer, the voice said.
The director smiled and waited for Cass to reply. Words hung with black crepe
decorated the thoughts of mourners. Black-robed men followed in hearses, while ball-
less nightmare horses carried a pink and white child to a yawning, wormy hole in a
mud-packed field, where lone daisies bend and die, and drops of rain, black as ink, fall
and stain the earth.
The director took Cass aside and spoke. I dont understand why everyone is so
distraught. Death is inevitable, why fight it? Why not send the deceased off with
jubilation and jazz? Is death not the Christmas of the soul? the longed for condition of
the human spirit? Is it not the passing into gods eternity? Or Is death punishment from

36
a jealous god for people who take life for granted, or never bother to look back and
feel regret, or look ahead and cringe in fear of what unborn tomorrow holds in store?
Death is such a common thing; it must despise its own appetite. What shame it
must have felt when it reached out like an old reprobate with lecherous arms for such a
lovely child and throttled her innocence.

Canto XXX

He sat in his room alone while he tried to retrace the steps that led to this moment.
Where had he gone wrong? When did he stop thinking about his own survival and
begin to devote so much time to thoughts about a child who had never asked anything
from anyone. Who was she and what did she expect from him?
She would have desired from this life only one thing, a young man who would not
expect too much from her to soon. She was to homely to inhibited a man. She would
have flattered an ego regardless of the damage inflicted upon it in the past.
She would have been as delicate as her size would have permitted and a little shy.
She would have asked unimportant, non-threatening questions of her suitors because
she knew intuitively they would not have been clever or insightful, but weak minded
enough to possess arrogance and fragile vanity. She would not have realized her own
genius for getting along, and would have taken her skill for granted. She would not
have resisted their kisses, or their clumsy advances, because she would have liked
being kissed and touched.
Her life would have proceeded along that path until one ambitious but unoriginal
man proposed marriage and spirited her away for a week or more while they learned
the fundamentals of lovemaking. They would have returned to his or her parents
home bolder and more confident of their undertaking. They would have pitched in
with the household maintenance, but would have too soon realized they needed their
own digs. A few arguments would widen the familial gap, and then they would have
broken away from the clan and founded their own home.
Eventually they would require a separate identity, a home or structure of their
own. They would buy or build a house and embark upon another live that that did not
permit backward glances to past filial or maternal loyalties or regressions.
Living by then would have become a full time job with its demands and painful
humiliation. They would eventually have discovered the boundaries of their lives,
loves and social acceptability, with all its anger, anxiety and injustice.
They would propel themselves forward unwittingly not stopping for sidelong or
backward glances through the quickly passing years until they reached a degree of
isolation and independence, where they could successfully avoid the eddies and swirls
of life about them and drift with the tides and times.
It would have all ended eventually, perhaps painfully, perhaps not. But it would
have ended, and there would have been more uncertain children arguing about the
wrong things that had been denied or never realized, or things that no one had ever had,
but only thought or dreamed of having and been denied.
Her children would have eventually hung her in effigy and hated her for being
only a mother and not a real god inspired spiritual leader. And then they would have
buried her. They would not have had to force tears because the truth of the matter

37
would surface and they would discover the source of their uncontrollable grief. They
would have realized that all along they were merely cannibals surviving on her love.
One of her children may have been a football star, or an effete intellectual, and
wrangled an education from a state school. But he would still have hated her because
love was something she would have fel she did not deserve, being the child of her
mother, the husband of the man she married, the daughter of shame and poverty, and
the youthful bride of death.
I know, I see it happen all the time.

Canto XXXI
The traffic just beyond a patch of foliage, some architect believed would enhance
the value of the apartments, accelerates maniacally. Swift movingstreams of autos
operated byeye-weary men and women zig-zag in and out of lanes. One thought
occupies their collective mind, which is to escape the traffic their presence has created.
Those angry Cosmopolites -- knights in gray flannel suits-- whose lance-like
minds probe angrily through the back windows of the chrome and steel steeds they
challenge so recklessly, have but one redeeming thought, and that is to be safely and
serenely immured within the walls of their tomb-like temples. Sanctified to preserve a
maximum of peace and sanity in a minimum of space.
Every day they emerge from within those lavishly decorated vaults like maggots
from a warm carcass rotting in the sun. Subtle lunatics whose madness, like the tiger
pursuing his own tail, drives them to such a savage frenzy throughout the day that in
the evening they melt and dissolve completely, until they disappear once more behind
their prefabricated walls, the very veil of obscurity their instincts demand they must
struggle to overthrow.
While the flashing strobes of a helicopter cruise over the distant highway and
report traffic conditions to those trapped in the web below, the buildings interior
lights come on. The silence that his inhibited the halls all day yields suddenly to the
voices of children returning from school, of pre-schoolers peddling their tricycles
through the halls at break-neck speed, and pregnant young wives slogging through the
halls with their abdominal burdens to greet their makers and un-doers..
The sounds of stereo and television sets begin to penetrate the walls. Heavy
footsteps and the rattling of pots and pans are clearly discernable. The sound of
running tap water begins to sing in the pipes, while somewhere behind the walls, the
heating unit comes to life.
High-pitched male voices laugh like schoolgirls, giggling and grab-assing with
each other in shameless heterogeneity.
The prospect of reading the evening paper is chilling. Cass must conserve his
energy for more deserving material. Something that will blot out all implications of
the insanity that surrounds him.

Canto XXXII

Time unfolds. Evening disrobes. The dull gray shadows beyond the window
change to deep purple night shot with luminous stars. Silence, the child of night
returns to claim her own.

38
 Cass shelters in her dark embrace, drifts across the parking lot and down the
parkway to the illusory city whose night fires tremble and glow like distant stars. He is
carried over rivers and bridges, across the country in a single bound, and pauses on
mountain and cliff tops to hear the wind pray, the grass sing and the planet moan a
eulogy.
The silence is comforting. It is as if the great sanctimonious consumer of all
things has taken a nap from his arduous task of devouring mankind. There is a lull in
the great rush toward the jaws of death. His ravaging jaws are still, and movement
upon the earth has been forbidden.
The roar and scream of automation, the whine of drills and the clank of presses
that have so long deluded the senses have expired and left in their place a land devoid
of sound. The machinery of mortality, the machinery that formed the soul, the heart,
the intestines, the bowels, the fear, greed, envy, shame and subordination to a metal
will, a will of industry, of production and control, of increase and demand, of labor,
machinery and men, war and hate, bread and milk, have all ground to a halt.
It is a silence that exalts. No smoldering smokestacks ream the sky, no acrid
debilitating odors fill the air. All is silent. It is the peace and quiet of a charmed
insanity. It is a silence that brings men to the edge and offers a chance to sit and gaze
at the great theater of the universe to observe the play of tomorrow in all its unborn
trials. The past floats like a captured star unable to escape the prison of memory. The
present fades and the mind espouses time. The dream of lost centuries becomes a
single moving thought. The stars quarrel. An occasional outburst of temper flares and
ignites a galactic dream, but it too is eventually silenced.
Conquered worlds, enslaved by distant suns, beckon to seduce the imagination.
The mind takes a walk of a billion light years and never leaves the skull.
It is a magnanimous sound that few hear. It orchestrates symphonies, imposes
breathless music, and the mind is bludgeoned into peace. There is no greater music
than the sound of the earth as it spins rotating through the universe.
The winds of time whistle passed ones ears and we are all lulled to sleep by the
subtle rotations of the planet.

Canto XXXIII

Living had become an intolerable effort. A thousand meaningless rituals had

turned the simple act of rising from bed a hostage situation. To rise before a certain
time would surely result in disaster. To look upon the bed after arising would incur
incurable melancholia. To dress before injecting caffeine into the blood stream was
loathsome and despicable. To drink coffee in the kitchen would plunge his spirit into
oblivion. To eat cold cereal for breakfast would sterilize him artistically. To neglect
brushing his teeth, to wear a soiled shirt, or trousers that were too tight, scuffed shoes,
or socks that werent mated, succeeded in rendering him impotent. Lacking excuses to
account for his failure to function, he substituted rituals and found them culpable. In a
short period of time he had convinced himself of their fault and had become distrustful
of his own motives. He had lost the gift to strike quickly and leave no dangling
participles to bear false witness. He had buried his know-nothing genius beneath a
psychic barrel of idiosyncrasies.

39
 It had been a long cold day. There were no fires burning brightly in the evening to
lure him on a perilous journey across the nether-lands to womb-sweet-womb. The
winds were sweeping through the streets terrorizing the secret places of men and
beasts. The great shameless open sky leered down upon the cold and frightened and
spewed great gulping gusts of cold that nipped at mans naked, exposed and
unsheltered jackals hole.

Cass wiped sleep from his eyes and pressed a few strands of unruly hair down
against the side of his head. He slipped into his tight-fitting sport jacket and slightly
worn topcoat, stepped out the door and braced himself against the cold.
From the top of the world, just above the Arctic Circle, a cold wind armed itself
and started its southern-most trek. Meteorologists had threatened and warned the
country with it for days before it finally made its way into the haunts of civilized
society and attempted to freeze the balls off every upright man.

Its progress was slow, butmeaningful. It made as many false starts as a writer
does before it began to move. Cass watched its progress on the tube like a man
awaiting the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. It swept across the Arctic wasteland,
holidayed in Canada and nearly killed the Indian inhabitants of a dozen small villages.
It buried Michigan, sunk a few boats in the Great Lakes and turned Cleveland and
Chicago inside out and upside down. It lightly blanketed southern Ohio, Pennsylvania
and Maryland, but completely ignored the District of Columbia. Then it just trickled
out somewhere below the Mason-Dixon line. It was the final blast of the year. It
threatened, struck, upset the lives of many and was quietly inhaled back into the great
bronchea of the universe.

Canto XXXIV

The bus stopped outside his door. He climbed aboard and rode into town. Cass
envied those night-blooming rodents that so enjoyed the rotten, flattering lights of
velvet cafes and the company of those slim, seductive two-holed freaks whose odors
depraved the very rooms they entered. How permeated, he thought, with sweet poisons
those beige colored powder rooms must be. How bent to vice must a woman be after
returning from the privy having inhaled the poisons that waste the earth.
Yawning between their slim-corseted thighs, he knew there existed an
unfathomable abyss that drew and absorbed all light and consciousness, not only from
men, but from the entire universe. Women however were not to be condemned for
their devouring cleavage; it was part of the system, and they were merely an
appendage. It had become instead the blind will of the universe.
He strode through the dark nocturnal dream of twisted streets, attempting all the
while to survive the mad effluvium of mankind disporting around him. He stepped
into an alley and pissed in a bottle without picking it up. He shivered and shrugged.
His aim had deteriorated.
Bundled against the cold, he walked until his legs ached and then found shelter in
a vacant doorway where he squatted amid discarded cigarette butts and tobacco
phlegm.

40
 A few blocks away, the traffic was furious. Beams of light glanced from dirt-
encrusted warehouse windows and slivers of broken glass. It was reflected in flashing
silver blades. He listened to the distant battle raging on the lighted streets. He listened
to groans and gasps. He listened to rodents and insects crawling through the buildings,
gnawing at the rotten wood, food, furniture, steel, baby fingers, ears and noses. He
listened to the old bald men singing battle hymns and anthems.
Choirs croaked to the symphony of the now rusted guns, the busted battle drums,
the fifes, the riflemen; the noble brass, the howitzers and the machine guns, and the
cymbals, grenades, and landmines, and mortars bursting like steel drums and triangles.
It was a shower of stars, phosphorescent night lights and a blitz. Wood winds, arias
and painted banshees crashing through the strings, with cellos and violins, leading the
way, a brilliant orchestration. An operatic crescendo of screams and bullet-ridden
bodies shuddered on the ground, while a quiet bath of blood glistened in the pearl light
of moon, and the musicians waxed with fatigue.

A black snow of tormenting soot was falling from a burning height blanketing his
membranes. The wind sliced and cut with subtle precision. He pulled his neck and
head into his sheltering coat and covered the top of his head with his arms. The wind
hurled icy debris and bits of paper in his way. He cursed the wind and concealed
himself as best he could in the doorway

Canto XXXV
Germanicus Peale

Germanicus Peale was a veritable impresario among the stringed mannequins. His
remarkable talent and imaginative performances were highly regarded by the clientele
of the Royal Theater. He was the most widely reviewed writer and producer of
pornographic puppet plays in the city, and for all he knew, the world. This widely
known, but unacknowledged fact, was however a closely guarded secret and concealed
from the nuns and elementary school children he entertained every Saturday afternoon.
Immediately following the performances, the children were permitted a trip back
stage to view the sets and puppets. It was a privilege not extended to the weeknight
crowd that came to view the porno-formances.
The puppets, wardrobe and sets were carefully arranged for the childrens viewing
pleasure. Peale always tried to conduct himself with dignity and grace among the nuns,
but succeeded only in feminizing his gestures.
The nuns in black habits and round white collars worked swiftly to prepare their
wards for the trip backstage. The young pre-teen girls were equally enthusiastic about
the prospects of spending another half-hour behind the curtain and in the wings of the
dark and somewhat disreputable theater.
After the lights came on and the curtain opened, Peale invited them all to join him
on stage. The girls awaited the signal from a nun with a pitch pipe and then they
marched in cadence together.
Peale guided them through a detailed description of each puppets character. He
explained to them how in the process of carving, the nature and grain of wood

41
possessed so much good. Character, he explained, came from within the wood and his
hands, guided by the captive spirits of woodland nymphs, excised it.
To more fully illustrate his theories concerning the art of woodcarving, Poole
submitted the acknowledged beauty of Godiva as an example. She was as beautiful a
creature any hand of man had ever carved. She was far more than a puppet; she was a
work of art. Her own perfection, as well as the skill of the puppeteer and carver, had
come into full fruition. The beauty of her wood grain had lent itself to the masters
knife and Godiva emerged -- a forest goddess -- from the heart of golden oak tree, a
puppet of the finest qualityy.
Every schoolgirl fell in love with her. When she spoke from the tapes concealed
behind the curtains, the children listened to every word. When she delivered an oration
or a recitation, except for her voice, the theater was silent.
You whom my heart loves most dearly, tell me true,
When you are silent and alone, what do you do?
They knew she could not feel love or warmth, but when she directed her puppet
peers toward greater happiness and the pursuit of puppet pleasures, the children were
not able to deny her their allegiance. She was the patron puppet saint of all the girls at
St. Marys Catholic School.
Whenever Poole caused her to move an arm or leg, it was his desire to have her
reveal the exquisite workmanship that had gone into the sculpting of her carefully
concealed charms. But Godiva always remained nave and virtuous. Although he was
the master and pulled the strings, he could not induce her to make a single tasteless
gesture. It had been his original plan to make her a wanton harlot, a loathsome and
despicable creature, but she developed a will of her own.
He held her before the amazed and curious eyes of the nuns. He revealed her toes
and counted her teeth for their pleasure and enlightenment. When his devotion to
Godiva became too ardent and earthy, the nuns clicked their tongues and rubbed their
wedding bands for the husband they had lost to Calvary.
The girls from St. Marys plucked the strings and peeped up the pants legs and
skirts of the puppets. Peale magically produced a hand puppet with a woodenhead
from his jacket pocket. Cloth and wood became a living thing. They shouted questions
and comments to the strangely painted face and piece of cloth.
A dozen girls surrounded the puppet master, while a few grew impatient with his
words and wandered off to explore dark corners and rooms hidden behind colorful
flats.

From the distant makeup room, George Browne watched the proceedings. He was
a young man grown prematurely old. Drinking and doping had been his art. The sight
of girls in clean cotton dresses had awakened feelings inside of him that had been
buried for years. He felt a deep affinity with children. He was sure they, especially
little girls, were sympathetic to his special needs. When one honey-haired child dared
the shadows of the makeup room, George swiftly placed his hand upon her mouth and
gazed into her eyes. He could see fear, but it was not as great as her curiosity. He
whispered comforting and reassuring words softly in her ear. When he felt the tension
drain from her body, he released her, embraced her gently and lightly brushed his lips
upon her cheek. She did not resist. Tears of gratitude filled his eyes. He touched her

42
soft cheek, took her hands in his and kissed them. He carefully guided her arms around
his neck. When she did not protest, he slipped his hands slowly beneath her dress and
into her cotton drawers, and proceeded to gently pull them down around her knees
Her arms tightened around his neck, which conveyed to him a desire to proceed.
Her round and smooth little buttocks fit his hands like two Grimes Golden apples. He
squeezed them gently and whispered hoarsely into her ear. She remained motionless.
George began to tremble with anticipation. She gazed at his eyes and saw unbridled
lust and desperation Beads of perspiration formed on his forehead. A warped, nervous
smile crossed her mouth. He moved his hand to the inside of her thigh. A tiny
concealed sob shook her body. Desperately, he pressed his mouth against her cheeklip,
and she went limp in his arms. He laid her gently upon the floor. She held a hand over
her mouth and her eyes filled with tears. He slowly lifted the dress above her waist,
bent over her body and placed his mouth upon her navel. He sensed a convulsive
upward movement by her body to meet his lips. Any and every movement by the child
was considered consent. When she tried to crawl quietly away, he did not recognize
her gesture as fear, but as an attempt to improve her position for ease of contact. He
knew what she wanted. He thrust his tongue into the smooth nave between her legs
and she began to whimper, which he mistook for signs of pleasure. Before he could
enclose her tiny hips in his hands and devour her hairless fruit, the door to the makeup
room burst open and Galea, the theaters owner and Georges employer and wife by
common law -- entered.
Her abrupt entry shifted the weight of guilt to the confused and frightened child,
so she screamed. Surprised by the power in her voice and the strange drama that was
unfolding, she screamed again, stood and ran barely naked into the auditorium. The
nuns emerged from behind the drawn curtain. The child headed straight to the nearest
nun and was engulfed immediately within the security of the dark robe. She began to
weep hysterically, but unconvincingly. The nun tried to calm her. Between breathless
gasps of feigned innocence, she revealed all. The nuns listened in horror.
He made me do it! She screamed A man made me do it.
Galea suddenly appeared from behind the drawn curtain. Dark and splendid as
Circe in a Greek drama, she was carrying the childs dress and underwear ni one hand.
The girl screamed again and buried her face in the nuns robe.
Galeas mouth was full and sensuous, while her eyes were cool and calm. She
looked down the straight perfection of her nose at the child. The girl searched for the
nuns leg in the confusion of the robe. She sensed animosity from the towering dark
woman who stood over her and the little nun like a queen in a pageant. Galea tossed
the cotton panties and dress at the girls feet.
You may put your clothes on now, she said calmly, The performance is over.
The nun looked curiously at Galea and at the child clutching her robe.
Perhaps you can tell me what this is all about? The nun said in a demanding
voice.
Galeas eyes fastened on the frightened child. She was undressing in the makeup
room. She became frightened when I found her; so she screamed and ran.
The child stared incredulously at Galea. It was incomprehensible to her that a
woman would conceal such an indiscretion. It was not at all what she had been taught
to expect. A childs innocence was to be preserved at all costs. Transgressors or

43
violators were cruelly punished no matter whose husbands or fathers they were. The
innocence of childhood was unquestionable, beyond reproach.
The Amazon, apparently, lived by another code. The child suddenly knew that for
some unfathomable reason she preferred to protect the man. She cared more for the
man than for the innocence of youth. The child felt that this was not the kind of
behavior she was taught to expect from another woman, a co-conspirator.
The child spoke haltingly, the confidence in her innocence somewhat shaken. Thats
not true, there was a man..
Galea turned sharply and walked toward the mezzanine stairs. A fancy tale, she
said, Invented, no doubt, to escape punishment. I know, I used to make up stories
like that myself.

Galea pushed through the orchestra doors and disappeared. In the lobby, She
greated Peale. He was standing beyond the doors. She apologized and smiled. He
returned her smile with a leering grin. His lips were parched and his white teeth
reflected the glow of the overhead lights. She pushed through another door and
vanished into a stairwell that led to the loge and her apartment.
He listened to her footsteps climb the stairs. He rubbed his thumb across the
wooden breasts of his puppet, Godiva. He would have liked to suck milk from them,
but could think of know way to make that adaptation. She was a lovely specimen.

The child began to weep hysterically. There was a man, there was.
A stinging blow from the nuns hand landed solidly on the girls ear. Her crying
abruptly stopped. She knew that her cause was lost. She had been unable to affect the
dramatic quality necessary to convince them of her innocence. She buried her face in
the nuns robe and wept softly, but this time for her lost innocence and her own
incompetence.
Peale pressed close to the nun and whispered through the cowl, where he
presumed her ear to be.
Dont blame the child. Every time Godiva gives a performance, a few little girls
want to take their clothes off.
He laughed wickedly. The nuns eyes began to smolder. She dug the childs face
out of her robe. The girls eyes were red and swollen with tears. She held a hand over
her aching ear. The nun examined the tear-stained and swollen face carefully and
decided against further discipline. She stroked the girls hair and helped her into the
cotton panties. The child continued to protest between sobs.
But there was a man.
The nun spoke in a barely audible whisper. Not another word.
The nun apologized to Peale for the girls behavior. He nodded soberly expressing
a seemingly bottomless pit of understanding. She asked Gods blessing for him and
gently touched his bearded cheek. Peale thanked her and hoped that God would treat
her equally as well.
The nuns lined the girls up in the aisle and marched them out. The nun with the
pitch box called cadence.

44
 Peale packed the puppets into separate boxes. He placed Godiva in a suitcase and
sat it on top of the others. Godiva and Galea, the likeness was remarkable. Peale, had
of course, intended it that way. He had fashioned the puppet after her. He had even
succeeded in getter her to pose for him. Peale smothered a lethal chuckle. To imagine
Galeas body made his intestines tingle.
He could hear her walking above him. She lived in a renovated apartment
somewhere in the warren of space between the loge and camera room. As the
buildings owner she sometimes officiated as hostess at the more important showings
and events, such as Polish and Italian weddings, low-budget avante garde dramas, and
neighborhood improvement meetings. The theater however was not her only source of
income.
Peale had finished packing and was preparing to lock up when George entered the
backstage area. He had been hiding and watching from the wings. Peale shook his
head in utter hopelessness as they met.

George Browne was a quiet, handsome man whose aging face had been scarred
by a tyrannical conscience. He stood before Peale in ill fitting and unwashed clothes.
His face was like a lost boys, full of bright ideas, but weary beyond redemption.
Over the past few years, his body had been irreparably damaged . It was a body that
did not belong to the man or the mind. It was a body that didnt belong.
Peale could always find compassion in his heart for George. His only purpose In
life seemed to be to serve Galea. My God, he thought, what a strange pair those two
were. She was aloof, remote, a beauty that could inspire legends, while he was as
earthbound as dirt and guilt. Peale speculated upon their relationship: Was it intimate?
He rejected the idea. It was not conceivable.
Peale gathered George into his arms in an embrace and patted his back. What
were you doing with that nymph? he asked.
It doesnt have any hair on it, George said. Its smooth and clean, and smells
like soap and candy.
Peale laughed his thoughtless laugh of the irretrievably mad, while George
grinned with renewed pleasure. George delighted in being the source of pleasure for
others, even if at times it cost him a little dignity. Dignity however was something that
quickly passed beyond concern. It meant nothing to him to be ridiculed, to be the
subject of contempt. The only important thing now was to remain a faithful, devoted
dedicated servant to Galea, the only person whose existence really made a difference.
In her light and delicate fragrance, she was the only one who counted. It made no
difference what others did or said. All that mattered was total submission to her ever
widening, all consuming influence
Peale grasped George firmly around the shoulders and shook him firmly. They
laughed together and at each other for no apparent reason. Peale released him and
walked briskly away, wrapped his topcoat about his shoulders and started through the
lobby. George grinned self-consciously. He could still hear Peale laughing on the
street. George returned to the make up room and began to examine closely the floor
where the little girl had lain.

45
 Canto XXXVI

Cass leaned against the fire exit of the Royal theater. He gazed with rapture at the
fading glimmer of a distant star as stanzas exploded in his mind like colored, troubled
dreams with oriental origins. Bastard sons of Iqbal and Dylan Thomas saddled
seraphic Pegasuss and flew like avenging demons down the concrete beach of streets.
His pencil was poised and ready to record in a small yellow pad the slightest
intimations or thoughts. In the distance, concealed by night and the dark walls of
concrete that surrounded him, the stentorian clamor of warring taxis could be heard,
horns honking like flocks of Belgian geese. He balanced the notebook on his knee and
with his free hand, reached into the shadows of the doorway and retrieved a box of
stale popcorn. A light fall of soot threatened to stain the unblemished kernels. He
flattened his back and the box of popcorn against the door and cautiously, one at a
time, popped them into his mouth relishing each and every stale delicacy.

A figure turned the corner, staggering and murmuring obscenities. He stopped

abruptly, cocked an ear and listened to voices that only he could hear. Slumping
against the building, he attacked his invisible tormentors with doubled fists and poorly
contrived and executed mule kicks.
For several minutes, he showered deadly blows and profane accusations on his
invisible opponents. Exhausted, he stopped and surveyed the fallen, kicked at those
shadows that refused to lie still and stared toward the sky, shaking his fist defiantly.
He picked his way over and around the unseen fallen and continued to mumble
obscene improvisations.
Cass watched the figure stalk and strike out in several directions as he approached.
He stopped several time to chastise fallen opponents and occasionally sought
forgiveness. When he reached the doorway where Cass was sitting, he stopped again,
squared his shoulders for another round, and tried to focus his eyes on the new
assailant. Cass grinned and split popcorn kernels with his teeth. The man gave his own
head a punch to clear away the phantoms.
Cass offered the box of popcorn to the pugilist. The young man relaxed his guard
and stared suspiciously at the prize. He staggered toward the seated figure. Cass
surrendered a few more inches of space on the concrete stoop. The man slumped
against the door, turned toward Cass, and with red-rimmed eyes watched him chuck
kernels into his mouth. Cass offered the box again and the mans dirty hand plunged in
and eventually re-surfaced with a fistful of kernels. He nodded and murmured what
may have been words of gratitude, stuffed a handful of kernels in his hungry mouth
and the other half spilled onto the street.
Completely out of tune with time and space, it had taken Titus Peachy forever to
find his way through the dense fog of silence that haunted his waking nights and days.
He had wandered through the citys streets for years, while words collided around him
in a thousand abject movements without any meaning. Their high tones, frozen meters
and uncompromising gravity weighed heavily upon his heart. A few quiet bursts of
laughter had once moved the air about him, then word silence reigned, and all of time
and conversation were lost. One word, two words of silent despair, and he never knew
or could explain the sorrow of regret.

46
 Now words were queuing in his throat, waiting their turn to flip off the
springboard tongue, jack-knife in midair, and slice through the oral ether and
disappear into the whisper of an ear. Titus was reborn as an oracle spewing oaths and
hungry adjectives a mile a minute. No one knew or understood the meaning or could
explain the confounding silence that had impounded his tongue for so long, but many
had tried.

Canto XXXVII

The streets were burdened with smog and the threat of rain. Voices emanated
from behind closed doors and drawn shades. Shadows drifted silently through the gray
mist. Peale did not hesitate. He hurried through the darkness to the bus stop. The
suitcase full of puppets banged against his leg. The snap and crackle of unknown
discarded things beneath his feet made him uneasy and dubious about his footing. He
would not risk a downward glance to see what he was stepping on. He carried his chin
high and avoided eye contact with the street. His eyes tracked the diffused light from
the street lamps.
He did not hear the querulous voice that sliced in a barely audible whisper before
he felt the gentle pressure on his arm. It stopped him in his flight and turned him round.
Peale raised a hand instinctively to protect his face from harm. Titus Peachy stumbled
back into the darkness. Peale lowered his arm and examined the half-human creature
vanishing into the cover of night.
Titus Peachy was thin and wasted, a hopelessly lost being bereft of reason and
looking for a kind rebuttal. Peale snarled. Titus wobbled on his thin uncertain legs
and his eyes remained closed. He could not see the men he solicited; he could only
feel the coins they placed in his hand. There were no moral codes or injunctions that
required beggars to loose their eyes upon their benefactors.
He felt a presence with the kind and generous, which nearly cost him his life; the
cruel and selfish however filled his heart with sadness. The most generous and
concerned were the ones who regularly beat him for sport without fail, after they knew
with certainty that he was harmless and for the most part helpless. Sometimes they
returned night after night to beat him again and again. To some it was better than food,
sex or prayer.
It was the regularity of the beatings and the sadness that had accustomed him to
the presence of the death wish that thrived like a hungry worm in his body. His early
fears turned to a wish and now he looked hopefully for the smashing fistful of hatred
from the hand of every person he solicited.
He shoved his palm toward Peale, and Peale despaired. He declined to appease
the open palm, the invitation to brutality. He could see no point in prolonging madness.
He knew Titus tight ass Peachy too well to throw good money after bad.
Casss presence on the stoop however set off a warning knell. Peale motioned
toward the shadows; Titus turned and smiled. Cass raised the battered box of popcorn
in the air. Peale took a few steps forward, observed the smiling face in the gauzy pale
light of the distant lamp and lost his fear.

47
 The eyes that gazed back, Peale discerned, were not violent, nor could he see
anger in the mouth. In fact, he found the features appealing. It was the face of a young
man with a detached and sympathetic mind; a face that did not rely upon the language
of deceit. It was a face that observed but revealed nothing. Its sweet indifferent charms
were disarming, an invitation to intimacy and not inclined to squabble and quibble
over demeaning differences. It was a dreamy-eyed face that did not nurture doubts,
impotent dreams of fame and fortune, power or damnation.
Cass gathered stray corn kernels from his lap and placed them in his mouth.
Peale stepped forward. Youre trespassing on private and posted property.
Cass surrendered the half-eaten box of popcorn.
Peale scoffed at the offer with a snort. It is within my rights to summon the
police and have you removed from this property.
Cass searched among the seeds for the few remaining kernels.
Peale turned toward Titus Peachy. And what kind of wickedness have you
planned for this pathetic debased creature?
Cass glanced in the direction of Peachy; he was sitting on the stoop, elbows
resting on his knees and a thread of saliva dangling from his mouth and sagging jaw.
Cass felt troubled. Peachy had provided a moment of respite, but now the true
worth and value of his presence had been raised.
This is my friend, Titus Peachy.
Peale grinned. Your friend? It is only fair to warn you that your friend is a
compulsive suicide. It is a miracle that he is still alive. He has made more attempts on
his own life than you have fingers and toes. You cant imagine the unique methods he
has employed to end his misery. From guns and knives to fire and water, hes tried it
all. In the world of suicides, he is unique. He was once discovered trying to shove his
head up a horses ass and wait for a systolic movement to break his neck. He was also
prevented from shoving a garden hose up his ass. And in the dead of winter, he was
found lying naked in a snow bank. There seems to be no reasonable explanations for
his suicidal behavior. It can only be construed as an unflagging curiosity to experience
the irrevocable finality of oblivion
His self-imposed silence and his sorrow are classic. No man has ever been so
brilliantly unhappy, yet remain so genuinely sincere. To see him, to speak to him is to
die a little death. A minute is like a millstone around his neck, and time is like a giant
pendulum swinging from one failed attempt to another. Such titanic sorrow can only
be rewarded with the most violent and despicable death. I can only wish him the
greatest joy and success when he discovers what it is he desires most.
To search for ones own death is beyond philosophy. It is wise to prepare, but to
wander through the alleys and sewers and seek death the way other men seek love
confounds reason. It tires me to contemplate the majesty of his thoughts. Titus Peachy
demands either complete annihilation or immortality. There will be no compromising
fate. If he cannot achieve the stature of a demi-god in his death time, he prefers the
oblivion of non-existence. At least, in utter dejection one has misery and poverty to
prevent one from dwelling on past failures.
He places too high a value on his name, as well as the memory he intends to
leave behind. He can willfully destroy his flesh, but he dare not harm the memory
others have of him. He is philosophical enough to see the vanity of his quest, but he is

48
too proud to exchange his dream for secondary conquests such as job security, or a
minor success in the sales field. Titus has left no psychological loopholes for his
personal demon to escape.

Cass was confounded by the implications. Why does he do things like that?
Peale replied: At one time, Titus was a great Shakespearian actor. He was no
Barrymore, but he was the toast of local drama clubs. Then he had the misfortune of
reading for the lead role in Titus Andronicus, which is where he got his first name. He
tried to live with both names, but his personality began to fragment. After three years
and nearly 600 performances, he went stark raving mad and began to not only act the
part but live the part. Eventually the role drained him, demoralized him, left him with
nothing but irresolvable dilemmas about life and death, and that is how he wound up
here, a bag of wasted bones.
Cass chucked a solitary kernel in his mouth, and gazed sidelong at his new friend.
Peale dropped the suitcase on the ground. He pulled a handful of change from his
pocket and threw a quarter toward Cass.
Carry my bag to the bus stop, and you can keep that quarter, he said.
Cass picked it up. He would not have carried the fat mans bag for a dollar, but he
sensed that Peale had something else to say. He lifted the bag and followed.
I live in a hotel on West 61st Street; I have a small suite, suite 16, an appropriate
number, dont you agree? Im a playwright; no doubt Im the first playwright youve
ever met. Right?
Cass nodded.
Ive lived here all my life; how long have you been here?
Cass was cut short before he could reply.
Never mind, Im not interested. Do you have a place to stay? Youre not staying
with that fellow I found you with, are you? Hes a dreadful man. If you like, you can
stay with me and Ill give you a personal reading with cards, or a handwriting analysis
if you prefer. Im proficient at both. If you like, I have some films, unlike any you
have ever seen before I can assure you. If you want, well, well see when we get
there.

Canto XXXII

From the Sixteenth floor of the Phoenix Hotel, it is possible to gaze out the
window at an excellent view of Jerry Colognas new car dealership. If ones mucous
membranes have been productive and the wind is blowing in the right direction, it is
possible to spit and hang unwholesome bolls of snot all over the display window.
Nothing upsets window shoppers more than unsightly flourishes of snot decorating a
plate glass show window. If ones aim is exceptionally good, it is quite possible to pin
a slimy garland on the salesmen standing in the open doorway.

For years Germanicus Peale lived in a two-room suite with color television and an
endless procession of roommates. During hot summer nights, he would sit on the
windows ledge and piss gaily on the madding world below and verbally abuse
pedestrians on the street. His fat arms would jounce and his pendulous stomach

49
quivered from on high like moonlight reflecting in a small pond. His swarthy jowels,
the twisted mouth that uttered the foul injunctions, the sad eyes, rimmed and red from
reading the fate of mankind in the soot filled night skies, were not incongruous with
the fleshy frame.

Canto XXXIII

Once I was a master barber, now Im just a poet. Just because I drank my own
blood for breakfast everyone thought I was different. I got tired of reading Field and
Stream and looking at porno calendars, so I cut off a mans ear; I think it was an
accident. I lost my masters license; I was left with nothing.
My wife ran off with an aluminum siding salesman; I couldnt even find a part-
time job. I was forced to sell my home in the suburbs, where the only stimulating
pastime was taking the dog out for a walk and watching it shit in the neighbors yard.
Then I got fat, then plagued with the ailments that accompany obesity: ingrown
toenails, gas, cavities, kidney stones, hard stools, bad posture, short of breath, double
chins, sneers from slim men, and indifference from women.
It was as if all my past seductions had been cancelled and I was made to accept a
false past, the past of a fat man, lacking appeal and without personality, and with n no
inheritance to speak of only the contempt others felt for me.
Now I sit here in my tiny room and send out hungry impulses from my derelict
outpost and wait for her return. she was the first to observe signs of deterioration. She
tried to rehabilitate me, but to no avail. For several weeks she tried to reach me in my
isolation, but failure had dulled me to her needs, killed ambition, and devoured self-
respect.
All day I wore myself out attending interviews with Triple A Dunn and Bradstreet
rated companies. In the evening, silent and sad, bereft of reason, she ate what was left
of my heart. She ridiculed me. I was unable to reason from my new depth, and I
believed her. I starved the little genius I possessed. She meant no harm, and desired
only good.
She left in a white-hot heat that melted the crystal gems of dew sizzling beneath
her unsteady footsteps across the front lawn. She hated me anew. She packed her
Amelia Airehart luggage and Gucci overnight bag, bundled the kids up in ski sweaters
and alpine jackets, and whisked them into a waiting taxi. I watched her from the door,
slipping on the dewy grass, cramming the kids into the cab and vanishing down the
street.
She blamed me for all the plagues and ills that hung around our door. I was
responsible for poverty, greed, sadness, the runs in her nylons, and our oldest childs
lisp. I agreed respectfully, hoping to incur the full wrath of her displeasure and being
driven into the night and the quiet surrender that inhabits dark places.
She lopped off my member with insults and anger, and dismissed my hard learned
words with a clip of her tongue. I remonstrated by dying ignobly.
But now I am content to spend my lonely nights searching my cerebellum for the
proper equations to frame a lovely thought, a literary reference. Words and deeds of
great magnitude have been scattered throughout my mind, hopeless anecdotes

50
carefully incised and distilled from tons of verbal matter, the way sarcophagi are
removed from volcanic ash.
Grief and lonely longing come first to my heart before they go anywhere else.

Canto XXXIV

To improve and liberate his mind and thought through introspection, Cass decided
to record his responses to the subtle intimations of life as best he could. Like Ulysses,
who lashed his body to the mast of a ship and stuffed the ears of his men with wax, he
too deigned to embrace those pitfalls that dogged the Greek hero during his passage
home.
Charybdis, those wandering rocks that leaped from gutters and sidewalks and
caused all men to stumble and fall, and those terrible psychic whirlpools that seemed
to abound everywhere and drained the life, spirit and humanity from humankind down
into the maelstrom of indecision, were far more difficult to avoid than the beached and
broken whales that were so easily cast back upon the shore.
As for Scylla, the monster with 12 feet and six necks, Cass was determined to
confront that beast in its lair 16 floors above that island of perversion and
concupiscent nights. He would not stuff his ears with wax, but instead record the
songs of the Sirens in his fallow dreams and examine them with Jungian diligence for
a fitting solution.
He would also expose those mythical psychic legends for what they were, and
examine their fabric as if it were a Rorschach inkblot. He would excise his adolescent
fantasies regardless of the consequences. He was convinced those middling events and
fairy tales were not important to the scheme of things or to develop character. They
were not steps that descended to a human core that would mirror the mind and soul.
They were instead vain and useless pretensions printed on a page, plagiarized
from the book of humankind. They belong to no one in particular, but to everyone.

Canto XXXV

Cass conceded that he might find contentment living as a jealous man, or a greedy
man, or an ambitious man, or a thoughtless or thoughtful man, or a lazy, hopelessly
stupid man, but not a composite of every man that ever walked through the garden.
His search for character was not focused on finding golden, jade or even candied
apples, but for those delicious rosy red apples of far off Eden that float like flotsam
and jetsam in a cosmic garden of confusion and promised enlightenment.
His bookshelves groaned beneath the weight of the second-hand volumes he had
pressed into service in his quest for purpose and identity. Cartoons rent from the pages
of periodicals decorated the living room walls. Overdue library books languished
lasciviously in near shameless heterogeneous positions on a chair near the door. A
stack of old newspapers with worrisome headlines blanketed a coffee table with a
broken leg, while a laundry basket filled with soiled socks and emission-accomplished
underwear waited on the couch for a fun-filled tumble in the basement washing
machine.

51
 Canto XXXVI

Ancient scholars and modern prophets claim there is a great deal to be said, but
they too are worried and conflicted, especially about their habitats. Their minds are in
an awful mess. Few men work or think well when they are surrounded by the abject
concerns of others, especially their tertiary thoughts, the cerebral residual hyphenated
doubts comprising their daily lives.
Being an unwitting victim, and suffering from self-imposed isolation, Cass had
come to understand there were things in life that did not sit well, especially those
things that had not been clearly defined. The furniture upon which one reclined and
declined, the way ones personal possessions were thrown upon the floor, or on a desk;
the way a book was crammed into a tight narrow space on a shelf. While the curtains
that concealed our private lives from prying eyes could also be the sails that carried
imaginations to far distant shores. Everything associated directly or indirectly with our
wild or ambiguous creature comforts could incarnate new concerns and possibly
concealed dangers.
It was consoling however to realize that even the great and the gifted who stood
like paragons of virtue before the scrutinizing eyes of mankind, must also execute,
exercise and exorcise mediocre and mundane tribulations essential for their mortal
existence. They too, despite their godlike attributes, must roll their smelly socks into
little balls and stash their starched briefs in brightly colored, fuzzy, sit down hampers
that smell of mean woman woes and cotton crud. The wise, the humble, the beneficent,
yea, the very salt of the earth must submit to their own odors. Though we sever our
bodies and our minds from our nasal appendages, we cannot escape the odor of our
own existence. Though the connotation of our stench may differ and inspire in others
uninhibited exhibitions of delirium, when our noses get to close to our armpits, we
thank the lord for placing it on the front of our faces, where it can scoop in draughts of
fresh air, instead of near our ribs or on the bottom of our feet, where we would
certainly go mad. It is not by coincidence that we are designed the way we are, which
is to provide adequate defense against the assault of our and others odors on our
senses.

Haunted by an oppressive charade of conscience, Cass was not able to ignore the
surrounding disorder. He was not strong enough to rise above all the self-incriminating
details of his own meaningless existence, or to seek vindication for his misanthropy no
matter how loud and hard he denied his humanity. He tried to slip between the covers
of some unorthodox book that leveled its acrimonious and sanctimonious testimonials
at shape shifters and necrophiliacs, but his soul was beyond salvation. He was doomed
to a fate worse than life and living. He was doomed to pursue intolerable intimacy
among the more egregious members of society.

Like a toad symbolic, simple and silent, he would sit before his Remington Model
17 and wait for a parade of words, adjectives on horseback, elephantine adverbs, and
nouns with hairy chests, effeminate pronouns, lithe and supple, boiling-with-intent,
verbs, a side-show filled with freak ideas led by a brass band to enter into his
vocabulary and make him articulate.

52
 His words conspired to prey upon his doubts and fears: Eight chapters of the Song
of Songs revised; 100 pages of an unedited play about an unholy saint; two unfinished
novels that exuded a despotic and anti-social fetor; 50 anti-feminist poems; anecdotes
for True magazine; a ridiculous autobiography; unfinished poems, plays, short stories,
a book of matches with a poem written during various stages of drunkenness on the
inside cover; a bar napkin with a declaration of undying love written in heroic couplet
to a young and adulterous woman.
Fruitless flights of fancy lay bound and gagged before him; a strange Eden
awaiting cultivation; one dimensional alleyways that arouse and repulse at the same
time; infinitely thin rungs on the ladder of decadence; the burnt offerings of a social
bastard and a domestic typewriter; the congealed bleating of a visionary; the collared
lusts, sins and dreams of a backward-looking cowherd tending the flocks of Vishnu,
Ramachandra, Hyperion.
The fruitless past squandered, the present sedated, and the unraveling future
hunkered before him in a meager proliferation of crepitating pages like ineffectual
falling leaves. His mind was supposed to give them life, make them flutter in the
breeze, make them whisper and change color with the passing human seasons. His
creativity was a passel of pastel lies and faulty fabrications.

A poem fueled a sacrificial fire burning in the sink. It was only one of the many
fleecy white sheep belonging to the watchful and tireless sun god. Once it had
provided pleasure, but lately it had become a source of pain. For decades it had been
seeking publication. Its timeless wisdom engraved on his mind were sacrificed, a
miserly hecatomb. It was as if an unworthy lover had been sacrificed to appease a
jealous muse. A moment of relief quickened his heart; the relief a young woman feels
when she discards an aborted fetus, even if it was a gift from a god.
So, too, had his fetus discarded by publishers -- been aborted. A ton of ill-
conceived trash purged from pustulating pores the way a sauna bleeds blackheads.
Each hair upon Gods unworthy head and its daily growth had been documented;
every follicle provided with a legend; the length of his corporate archangels toenails
had been measured, and the dirt beneath their deliberately manicured fingernails
carefully adjudged and cleansed of imperfections; the soft and gentle down on their
feathery breasts examined, and the tiny tear ducts in Gods eyes have been epitomized.

Like a plucked duck, words have ravaged, picked the surface of vagrant intellects
clean and driven creation back into a solemn enclave where it hibernates. Nothing
remains now but to plod on to within an inch of the margin, slide the carriage back to
the left, and start all over again. I am told there is a great deal to be said.

Canto

Peale knew there was nourishment to be gleaned from the bones of this fanciful
young man whose slim body spoke carelessly of rags and mean poverty. But Peale had
lost long ago the teeth for stripping meat from a promising bone. Beneath his clothes,

53
beneath the flesh that hung from his jowls and paunch, he had buried the love of
young things and whatever truth he possessed.
He could still slough off words and ideas like flies, but he was no longer an active
part in what he preached or practiced. He could not even ignite his own curiosity
anymore, much less that of a young neophyte
.
Peale felt as if he had eaten too much, and drank too much, and talked too much
as well. Only one thing could offer him pleasure and peace at this moment and that
was the pleasure of his torpid flesh upon another. Cass however was too thin to seduce,
too thin to be concerned with the morbid appetite of flesh. Pool lit a cigar and probed
the rising smoke with its smoldering tip. Cass grinned and wiped tomato paste from
his mouth.

Some are convinced of the master builders insanity, Peale said. A few hastily
formed universes do not a Deity make. Logic and order, a spray of color, sweetness,
life and death, the seasons and natural wonders could hardly be the creative product of
some omnipotent despot.
Some things never awaken the truth in man. He could have taken it out on
emptiness and wished us into the corner of his unconscious, but here we are, livid and
unhealthy, screaming for our share of immortality.

Never forget the words of the songwriter Johnny Mercer; Dont shit under the
apple tree with anyone else but me.

Canto

I like to talk about God, but Im not a damned heathen Christian. Id rather be a
suckling pig with a skewer shoved up my ass than a pasty-faced Christian prick. They
laugh at God. They clench their rotten teeth and curse theyre only hope.
It is the architecture and the chemistry of civilization that breeds these worms of
hate.

Behold the human carcass, children of the alleys crushed into the winepress of
earth-mother, What mind pretends to understand their grief? What sorrow, what
immortal sorrow bursts such loving human hearts?
His mouth twisted into an ugly sneer. His eyes, red and brimming with tears,
followed Cass exploratory passage around the room.
This room is my home. I live here. I have a right to nakedness. I have a right to
shit in a shoebox, to piss in a bottle, or fuck a picture in a movie magazine.
Dont dare to judge me, bony ass, for I have an equal right to my own life.

Cass curled up tight into a fragile ball upon the bed. His bare knees nearly
touched his chin, while his arms supported his legs.
Take off your underwear; theyre filthy. You can wash them in the sink. In the
morning, theyll be clean.
Cass allowed his shorts to fall to the floor. Pool examined his body.

54
 Permit me to say, if I may, there is no time like the present for pissing on the past.
And that, dear Cass, is my purpose for shitting in your shoes.
Peale burst into a volley of laughter. He wiped the tears of joy from his eyes and
let the words and thoughts run like abscessed wounds from his mouth.
The right to know, if nothing else, corrupts and ages a young mans flesh. Like
rotting fruit upon the earth, he hopes that time and circumstance will draw from him
his sacred seeds and make new life, new fruit to rot and fall. Life is an endless path
that wonders through mans nerve; it leads only one way, to the furtherance of decay.
The force of life compels men rise and seek action and in seeking they discover
their deaths. Some let their eyes be led by wise men, who think they know the path
others should walk. Some grope in darkness for what they call truth, freedom, love and
light.
Men are blinded by their fear; they are dubious beacons darkened by a million
tears. In this uncertain quest for peace, a thousand barbed and nettled words are torn
from conversations, hung upon a breath and bound by the fancy of a mind. The visions
churn on endlessly, stealing from reality and revising from memory. Labor never
ceases, while the mind gropes, constructs and destroys the images of a desired peace.

The fat man moistened his lips and examined the naked youths slim hips.
How old did you say you were?
Cass bowed his head. The weight and gravity of his brief life hung in the balance.
Twenty four, he replied.
A gust of gale force winds wafted from Peales lungs.
You look like your sixteen, sweet sixteen and never been kissed.
Cass turned to examine himself in the mirror; his body was lean and smooth, and
his member was dangling at half mast.
Peale trembled as he took it in his hand and stroked it tenderly. Will you stay
with me tonight? he asked.
Cass crawled into the fat mans lumpy bed.
Peale sat by his side and cajoled and wheedled with assurances. We dont have
to do anything. I think I can make you feel good. And we can talk theosophy; you like
theosophy, dont you? Old Madame Blavatsky, and all her ghostly choir?
Cass nodded indifferently and turned on his side.
Peale removed his purple robe and the profusion of soft white flesh ebbed toward
the bed. He wallowed in his rolls of fat, thick as the skin on a sea mammal, on and
around the bed. Cass squirmed -- a baby harp seal about to be bludgeoned and
devoured by a toothless walrus. Peales rough and clumsy appendages attempted to
engage him.

Canto

No prophet of God, anchorite, sage, misanthrope, or hermit/recluse ever lived in

humbler circumstances. The cave dwelling of Zoroaster would have seemed like a
garden of sweet scents. Christs 40 days and nights wandering sleepless in the
wilderness were but a brief interlude to suffering when measured against the
loneliness and isolation George Browne experienced.

55
 From his vague retreat high atop the Royal Theater, squatting against the
mezzanine fire exit, George dreamed of a life that would bring him into contact with
the shadowy forms that moved on the street below. His dark eyes watched them as if
they were objects in a plan he knew nothing about.
Soot was engaging precipitants in the warm air and commencing to fall from the
sky as black rain: soilure soigne. He crawled back into his room and lay upon the bed.
His scalp itched. He dug viciously at the irritation, until the itching abated. He
removed traces of blood, dirt and scalp from beneath his fingernails.
For a long time, his hair had been falling out. He was afraid to wash or brush it
for fear of losing more. Every time he used a comb or brush, hundreds of hairs
surrendered, died or abdicated. It was as if his mind emitted some kind of biochemical
follicle defoliant. He smoothed it down gently in a futile attempt to secure it to his
scalp.
A box of hard candy fell from the bed and spilled upon the floor. From beneath
the nightstand and the bed an assortment of vermin scurried to investigate. The dark
smooth backs of the winged but flightless pests glittered in the light of the naked bulb
hanging above the bed.
An old newspaper, lying folded on the nightstand, was covered with stains and the
dry brittle limbs of dead roaches. A milk carton, bologna rinds, and a piece of half-
eaten cake rested on the battered dresser. Soiled laundry lay piled in heaps in a corner.
A single spread and one flat pillow covered the mangled unmade bed; the bed of a
saint swarming with infectious vermin would have been preferable by comparison.

With an open bible resting on his stomach, George recited his daily prayers and
penance. While he read, supine upon his bed of springs and nails, his fingers visited,
time and again, the irritation beneath the dry tousled hair on his scalp, and he
scratched savagely at the dry and brittle matted hair.
As he watched the roaches feasting on the hard candy, his hand slowly reached
for the folded newspaper; the expression on his repentant face never changed. Then
quickly and smoothly the newspaper struck, once, twice and several more times before
he stopped, and threw the tattered weapon across the room.
He sat on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees. His mouth twisted
uncomfortably as he struggled to moisten and rid his dry mouth of its bitter taste.
A stained tumbler filled with cloudy water sat in the sink, which was also filled
with dirty socks. He coughed and a ball of sticky phlegm rose to his mouth. He tore a
page from the book of Revelations and swiped it across his tongue.

The truncated bodies of roaches crunched beneath his feet. . He clenched his teeth,
removed his socks and threw them into the sink. His feet were smelly and unclean;
when, he wondered, would his Mary Magdalene return. He filled the cloudy glass and
poured the lukewarm water over his toes. The moisture disappeared into the worn
carpet and left a dark stain. He splashed a handful of water on his face and into his
eyes and very gently watered down a tuft of brittle hair. He stepped into a pair of
battered sneakers without socks and started down the stairs. A gray-striped cat

56
appeared suddenly from beneath the bed and followed close on his heels, dodging his
feet while he walked..

Early in life George Browne had become addicted to the tremulous craft of
refurbishing the truth. He absorbed the tales and experiences of others and vicariously
revived and relived them. His life was a kaleidoscope of events occurring all over the
world and sometimes simultaneously.
He claimed to be illegitimate son of a great Midwestern poet who had selfishly
denied him his birthright. He said he had worked at every occupation from a guide in
the Grand Canyon to that of a songwriter, dish washer, and even a ferry boat captain
before finding God in a mathematical formula and taking his vows as a holy man, a
man of the Catholic cloth, a custom-tailored Jesuit, cut from the same cloth as Our
Lord Jesus Christ himself. His portfolio of memories was as vivid as if they had
occurred only yesterday. Yet if pressed for a single detail, he could not begin to guess
as to the exact dates.
His engaging stories were often pretentious and unsound, but one could no more
question their validity then challenge the popes celibacy. He wore his purloined tales
like medals of honor.
If a casual observer was crude enough to insist upon some kind of verifiable data,
he received only a look of sympathetic compassion and indulgence from Georges
moist pacific eyes. Georges true origins however remained obscure, which
undoubtedly had something to do with the genealogy of his striped cat.

He opened the door to the kitchen and was assaulted by the harsh chemical odors
of ammonia, strong enough to inflict serious damage on ones nasal membranes. He
reeled momentarily overwhelmed by the feculent presence of dog urine, cat shit and
an intensely burdensome spray deodorant.
The light from Galeas bedroom was shining into the kitchen. He approached the
half-opened door. A record of Chopin was playing. She listened to nothing but Chopin,
night and day, day and night, the Preludes, always the Preludes.
She lay naked on the bed; her clothes in a heap on a chair near the window. The
curly golden hairs sprouting from her pudendum glistened with a pearly liquid
substance in the soft lamplight. The fragrance of spent vaginal fluids permeating the
air was strong enough to arouse the passions of a grizzly bear.
George crossed the room and sat beside her. She did not speak or open her eyes to
acknowledge him. She touched his leg. He took her hand in his; he did not feel worthy
of her touch. Moisture gathered in his eyes. Her beautiful body glowed with warmth.
He however would not defile or degrade her; he placed his head beside her on the
pillow, close to her ear.
Silence is the greatest experience Ive ever known with you. Everything fits you
so well. You smoke cigarettes and look bored and apathetic when you grind the butts
in a tray. I am beginning to be able to sense your presence, your needs. Tell me, true,
do you smile when I touch you? I cant help talking to you. Youre the only woman I
want to know. It is pleasure enough for me to sit and gaze at you. Sometimes, when
Ive been away too long, I get desperate for your face to be near me. But I dont have
to see you to know that I want to be near you. I am content with the way things are.

57
Remember, you dont have to look at me. If we never look at each other, we will never
know the sorrow of regret.

Canto

A lame, hungry poet arched his back and cried out in outrage and grief at lifes
injustice and heavens indifference. Hurtling allegations like spears and arrows from
Apollos black bow, he assaulted the gods who had sinned against him.
Where can a starving black man find soul food fit for a poet?
RC Dangerfield leaped from his chair, gnashing his teeth in love and rage of
everyone and everything he had come to know and despise. He cursed and cried out
demanding explanations for his unbridled sanity.
The world is too much against us and we are so few, he protested.
He was splendidly drunk on visions of chaste petal-strewing maidens awaiting
loves true avatar.
Angels, like desert nomads, prowl through the infinite sky singing crushing
praises to deformed children lying lame and maimed in the smooth transparent womb
of their fathers brides.
He turned his old and wrinkled face up to the sky and toasted the burning sun with
his tears and warm-as-piss beer.
The tall black balding poet rapped the table with his cane. At times it seemed as
if the lines that defined his ancient face were borne of sculptures carved in deepest
Africa, sculptures that hung on walls of furniture stores. There was a smooth severity
to the austere darkness of his skin and the unseeing whiteness in his eyes. His long
slim neck ended in a shock of white hair sprouting turbulently around his ears.
He had no tolerance for patience or passion; he was always ravenously hungry for
a thought or an idea, a human skull to gnaw on. He proudly proclaimed to be
descended from a race of voracious existential cannibals.
In the presence of white women, his mouth would water; the rotten stained stubs
of teeth protruding from behind his swollen lips would appeared like grotesque tablets
inscribed with vile deeds and decay. His blind, bloodstained eyes would bulge from
their dark sunken sockets, and the putrescence of his vulgar thoughts would permeate
the very substance and character of his physical demeanor.
His foul breath would circulate and poison the air and everyone would gag and
vomit. Then their waste and corruption would be inhaled back into his lungs. His
mouth would split in a grotesque grin, his lips would bleed, and a snake-like tongue
would uncoil and slither out to moisten his lips. Thick as a mares liver, his tongue
would slip up into a nostril and sample the vile corruption gathering there and
awaiting its expulsion.

Few white men could tolerate the odious whimpering of the black poet, but
Dangerfield was a rich black man who thrived on soft white flesh, and paid
handsomely for the privilege and the warm-as-piss beer.
His words went back to the birth of time and gods first lonely breath into the
flagon-like lungs of the black Adam of the dust. He too cursed and raged at the world

58
and mankind for being only half alive, and silently dug a grave with his tongue for
every man he met. He was a black murdering lover married to the muse of truth.

Fifty years ago, I rose up in anger and burned down my great white fathers
church. They chased me all the way to Cincinnati. When they caught me, they strung
me up to a tree. My fathers hands tightened the noose around my neck. When he
drove the buckboard out from under, I screamed. I screamed so loud blood spurted
from my eyes; a few seconds later, the branch snapped and I fell to the ground. No one
could believe that I was still alive, alive and kicking, but blind as a mole.

George Browne nearly busted a gut laughing at the black mans lies.
When my mother was a little girl, she used to sell herself, Dangerfield
announced. My white daddy weighed 400 pounds. He filled the back of a buckboard
with the tail-gate down. His name was Opey, but he made me call him Uncle Opey,
so no one would know we were kin. He called me a Pickaninny, and made me drive
him to town to buy wine.
The old negros badge of youth and courage was gone, and all that remained were
those disease infested gums, his shaky dance, and his sewer-gas breath.
Your mother was a whore whose swampy bottom killed more men than Hitler
did in World War Two.
It was only with Dangerfield that George Browne could find the presence of mind
to string an oath or an insult together.
RC was lame and blind, but knew the meaning of pride; he had taught the silent
Browne to scream and shout, and to call down the wrath of God on those who lived
only to curse and abuse their brothers.
He conceded, in his beer, there was some truth to what the man of constant
silence claimed. He took great pride in not denying truth; he knew the martyrs shame
of being born with a touch of the venereal stuff.
Despite his gnarled leg and twisted soul, he had grown tall and straight in talent.
His fingers were true and strong; and when he embraced the pen, he found it pleasing
to the touch. He had written a thick volume of poems and had them bound at his own
expense. It earned him nothing but the wrath of other men. His devilish dark eyes
however never wavered once in the quest for a good excuse to live, to carry on, to fill
the air around him with the harsh and often deafening music of his mind.

Dangerfield slammed his book of verse upon the ground and wept. Browne stood
up and laughed, took the black mans cane and stretched it out as if to spear his broken
heart.
Your mother was a bloody whore who killed her poor ignorant husband with lies
and a snarling cunt full of black sins.
Dangerfield screamed like a demented banshee.
Ive got a dozen grandchildren as white as the popes penis, he said. Theres
not a trace of the black mans curse upon their skin.
George Browne howled like a dog. Itll come out, you dirty black Jesus, when
youre buried and cold in your grave.

59
 A silence fell upon their passionate praise for each other. Dangerfield was as
black as the devils heart. He had married and buried two white wives in his lifetime.
They were poor and ignorant women from the highest and loneliest mountain peaks in
Appalachia, but their bodies ran with juices sweet as dandelion wine. He said he hated
the juice of black women, which was hot and bitter and running with vindication. He
said it burned his body and left a scar upon his tongue and tool.

His white wives gave him sons as strong and raw-boned as mules. They too bred
with whites and filled his house with handsome, white skinned, black haired, black-
eyed babies. There wasnt a man alive who took more pride in his stock. He claimed a
little nigger loving charged his ignorant white wives to produce some real babies.

For 20 years Dangerfield worked on his fathers farm. He claimed his mother was
a proud African queen who never let him have the tit. Shed wait until her breasts were
bursting with dark sweet juice then sneak into town and find a white man to try and
poison or strangle on her milk. Shed take the quarter hed give her and buy her own
baby evaporated milk to drink, the way rich white women did.
Dangerfield grew up fast and strong. His white daddy strapped him everyday and
made him lick his boots. One night when the old man had gotten roaring drunk, he
made young Dangerfield stud his mother. The woman died that night. Old Dangerfield
was never the same again. He lived another 10 years and died mysteriously. In his will,
he left everything to his black mother-fucking son, and thats the way he wrote it.

Young Dangerfield settled down to doing nothing but whoring. At one time, he
boasted that he had half a dozen women in the county, white and black, pregnant at the
same time. Neighbors said they saw him at night stripped naked and riding a white
stallion, looking like the master of hell himself. No one knew whether he was
coming or going to some hellish rendezvous with a young innocent white virgin.
Many times an angry father, husband, or brother waited in ambush and tried to shoot
him off the white stallions back, only to miss and hear his voice laughing wickedly as
he rode away. Others claimed it wasnt possible for a blind black man to ride a white
horse all over the county in the middle of the night, unless he or the horse was a
minion of some demon. RC said he spent more money on whiskey and women in a
year than the town collected in taxes.

Canto

Dangerfield raised his cane and pounded the table for service. George blubbered
down the final swallow of his beer. The poets book of verse lay near his feet stained
with snot and tears. He felt for the book with the toe of his badly worn shoe; the shoe
of a mendicant, traversing continents, thirsting to wade in a Hellespont, or wander
about the Dead Sea seeking ancient and forgotten scrolls.
A few lines of a poem he had written ages ago suddenly came back to him. He
could hardly believe they were his. And when I turned and started to go, I saw a
blood-stained footprint in the snow. An age of poetry lost because he drank too much
and slept too late in the morning.

60
 The Negro bawled his order out to the sweet fragrant presence of the young
peach-bottomed waitress named Cleo. She was a Norwegian girl who had changed her
name and sexual preferences and became a prostitute by design, working only on
Sundays and in or near a Catholic Church. It was her belief that Catholics were
immune to sexual infection.
George smiled as blind Dangerfield groped vainly for the young womans arm.
He was determined that his black monkey paws would never touch her skin of
Christmas white.
More beer for the poet and I, he said.
Georges thoughts flashed back to the distant past and his dead fathers cleft
palate. He thought about why he had run off to Europe and then to Egypt when he was
a young man just to float down the Nile with a black nun named Cleopatra, whose
gums were so black they were almost blue.
He scratched a sore that had appeared overnight on his knee. The pus and blood
drained and stained his trousers.
It wouldnt be long, he conceded, before the old nigger died, and then who would
buy the beer? It took him so long these days to think of worthwhile things to say, but
the poet never seemed to tire of his idle chatter. George could remember when hed
won a medal for debating in Greek, or had someone just given him that medal? Now
he couldnt find Greece on a map.

She placed her hand, soft as a kittens paw, gently on his arm.
Heres your beer, She said with a smile.
Tears of joy welled up in his eyes at her touch. Her eyes pleaded with him: I
know you need the old black mans money, and thats why you kiss his ebony ass.
Oh, God, he thought, his tormented soul writhing in agony. Dont touch me
virgin-queen-goddess, Im too corrupt. Ill not only infect your body with the
postulating evil death, I will infect the very air you breathe. Once, I would have been a
game match for you, but that was when I overflowed with sweet sauce. Now Ive
turned to bitter acid.
She stirred and a wave of female odors filled his nostrils and began to blind his
mind. Dangerfields bloody red tongue shot out and licked his thick Negroid lips. He
rested his pink-palmed hand on Georges arm and whispered hungrily.
Whats she like?
His fang-like stubs of teeth bit into his lower lip
Shes old, and as brittle as a crate of rotten eggs.
The Negro snarled and then pouted. He had smelled the truth and heard the lie.
His fingers tightened around the cane.
You are my Caine, my brother, traitorous Caine; the man who would sacrifice
my blood to the gods.
He sucked the foam off the top of his glass of beer.
Pfah, he said, spitting it onto the table, Its from the bottom of the barrel..
Dangerfield sniffed the air that lingered after Cleo moved away. His wives had
never smelled that good. They smelled like him, like sated Negro. George also was
beginning to smell like Negro. He was even breaking out with Negro sores. And why

61
shouldnt he? He spent all his time with one. He slept with any nigger whore he could
sneak into his room without Galea divining his sins.
Dangerfield rubbed his legs; they ached all over.
These old bones are getting weaker every day, I could never outrun a pack of
hounds now. What happened to the muscle in my arms and legs? Where did it go? I
once beat a man half to death with my bare hands, now I need a cane and a white man
to keep me on my feet.
Dangerfield once promised himself that hed never let a soft-headed nigger hold
his hand.
Georges eyes roamed about the room looking for something to hate. His eyes
rolled over in the back of his head; he fell down on his knees in a swoon, and came up
kissing the book of poems, and raising his arms in praise. He screamed because he
hated death and silence. He lapsed once again into silence and crawled back to his
chair.

Cleos cheeks were pink as salmon in a can. George smiled brightly and waved
his empty mug. She thought he was crazy. Hed tear up a table and a chair with his
bare hands and throw the pieces through the window. The nigger would laugh and
then nearly cough up a lung. He used to bring live cottonmouths and rattle snakes into
the bar, wrap them around his neck and scare the blind nigger to death. Hed bring in
the whore who had just tamed the poets lust, sit her on the bar and make her talk
about the great walloping piece shed just had slam-dunked into her jukebox.

It was like getting it from an old mule, wasnt it? He would say. Before he
began to scream wildly, his eyes would glaze over and they would almost shine in the
dark. Then hed hack up a wad of phlegm and spit it 30 feet across the room into
someones beer or face.
Ah, sweet Christ, what I wouldnt give to be shod of that darkie.
He scraped the blood and flesh from his scalp with dirty fingernails.
Jesus, Im a foul and filthy bastard. Have you ever seen my like before?
Dangerfields blind eyes stared right through him. Ive never seen your like
before, and whats more, Ive never smelled your like.
George looked up from a bowed position and stared into the Negros flaring
nostrils.
RC, youve got a nose like a bull.
A smile cracked the old mans face and his yellow rotten teeth glowed like a neon
atrocity.
George drank his beer, than drank what was left of the poets and slipped quietly
out the door without offering to pay.

Canto

Cleo, the waitress, followed Peale and Cass to Dangerfields table She stood
beside them but upwind. The black mans great nostrils began to flutter like sails on a
boat. His hands pawed the air as if his fingers possessed sensors.
Where is she? he demanded.

62
 Cleo stepped back further. Her feigned expressions of disgust amused Peale. He
took the girl by the arm and put her within reach of Dangerfields wildly gesticulating
hungry hands. His black fingers fastened on the girls arm like a sharks jaw. Slowly
his hands began to explore her flesh. She resisted briefly. Some final dying spark of
decency or morality seemed to glow for a moment, but soon died out. She ignored him
while he pawed her breasts and ran his hand up her leg and over her ass. His mouth
soon began to salivate freely and for the first time she enjoyed staring into his cold
dead eyes.
Peale leaned over toward the Negro and whispered into his ear:
This is the lovely Cleo. All up and down the streets you will find the cafs filled
with women just like her. The streets are filled nightly with these lovely young ladies
melting in their own flesh with unspent passion. You can get anything you want from
her. She is yours for the asking and a very small fee. To her, nothing is forbidden, no
act is either vile or obscene. What is unknown is soon to be discovered and
experienced. Her body is like a soft sponge absorbing all efforts of gods and men. Men
probe her inwardly and outwardly. Her mind and body are exposed to the entire force
of all mens brutal existence. She adds an inch or two to every mans stature.
There is nothing in her head to be concerned about, no thoughts of achievement,
no problems of time, no religious implications, no fear of age. She is not concerned
with pleasing men or herself. She neither moves forward of backward in the space-
time continuum. She voices no opinions; she satisfies but still remains aloof and
indifferent. Duality does not exist in her mind; there are no better and there are no
worse. All men whisper discretely into her ear and yet all men remain silent. She hears
nothing but that which her body communicates.
You cannot make any more or any less of her. She is every moment more of
herself than all women who silently mock their sex. You cannot possess her, she can
only be used, and you will never know who used whom. She is dead and yet unborn.
She has the warmest flesh, the softest mouth, the gentlest touch, the most seductive
voice, but there is never an even exchange. She gives to you, but to herself and for
herself. A man is only an instrument she uses to make love to herself.

Cleo freed herself from the Black mans grasp. Dangerfield began to rub the tips
of his fingers together to savor the memory of her soft skin.
She disappeared into a corner phone booth with a young man. Kass watched and
waited anxiously for her return. When she finally reappeared, her blouse was open and
she carried her bra; her skirt was twisted half off and her hair was in disarray. Cass
finished the glass of beer and watched the thick-lipped Negro poet begin to plead
desperately with Peale.
Can you get her for me? Ill pay you well. Ill buy you all the beer you can drink.
If you get her, you can stay and watch. They like it more when someone is watching.
Theyre all professionals, they take pride in their work.
Peale laughed and his stomach shook the table. The old Negro was grinning
hopefully. Cleo was behind the bar pinning up her hair. Kass watched; he listened to
the strange voices that continuously repeated an ancient ritual, the ritual of talk and
stalk, grab and feel, brag and boast, and hang your balls around your neck and never
let the ever-loving get away. Get all you can and hold the floor all night. All night

63
sessions in the Congress of Anatomy. That seemed to be the motto. Cass belched and a
burning sensation sent a mouthful of sour beer out of his stomach and into his mouth.
He spit it on the table. Peale frowned.
That was a filthy thing to do, he snarled.
The black mans mouth became wrinkled and puckered like an old womans
withered ass. Cass rested his chin on his hand and watched as Peale made a pained
expression of disgust with his eyes and eyebrows. Unaffected by the dramatics, Cass
yawned lazily. A pocket of air deafened him momentarily. He gazed about once more
for Cleo. She had buttoned all but the very top two buttons of her blouse. The fat meat
of her breasts was struggling to bound out. College boys were pitching pennies into
the deep crevice between her breasts.

Canto

The bartender tugged at Cass arm and slid a glass of beer in front of him.
You really think shes something, dont you? Well, shes nothing, old nigger bait,
thats all. She can be had any day for a dollar and a dime. Take a look at what just
walked in. Now if you want my opinion, thats something worth setting your jock
strap for. Ill bet youd like some of that, wouldnt you? Her name is Galea; she goes
for about 50 cents a pound, depending on the weight of the buyer. But in times passed,
Ive seen her jerk her jeans off for the hell of it. Shes got a mind of her own. She
even studied to become a CPA, but she was weak in math. I guess she got a natural
tendency for the kind of work she does now. Her mother kept a guy for 17 years and
never asked for a cent. And he had money, too, unemployment. They both used to
come in here a lot, her mother and her. They drank a few beers, played the jukebox,
you know, usual honky type people. But Galea had undeveloped talent. A guy reeled it
out on her one night, right in front of everyone, even her mother. Some guys got no
respect. He had a hundred dollar bill wrapped around it. Jeez, I thought she was going
to do him right on the spot. She gasped and fell to her knees and trembled like a
spastic. I got to admit that it was the damnedest piece of meat I had ever seen in my
life. It was as thick as my forearm and half the length of a police nightstick. You
woulda thought it would open her up like a melon. She grabbed him by the balls and
dragged him out the back door. He didnt even have time to finish his beer. A half
hour later she was back counting her money. I noticed she had a cool jelled look in her
eyes, you know, the way an epileptic looks after throwing a fit. She walked like she
still had some of that conduit still up her bottom. But she looked happy; she actually
looked happy. I guess that much money all at one time means something when you
never had nothing. Poor? Shes not poor anymore. Sitting on a gold mine. She can get
more into and out of that snatch than a Swiss banker can imagine. If she had as many
sticking out of her as she had stuck in, shed look like a porcupine. Now she owns real
estate, cars, furs, jewelry, but shes still honky. She comes in once in a while, drinks a
beer, shoots the breeze, plays the pinball, but she never says much. She used to be
talking all the time, laughing it up, cussing the Polish bowling teams, but not anymore.
All she does is sit and worry about the money and sack time shes losing while sitting
around. But to tell you the truth, I like her. She brings the guys in. They fight like hell
over her. But I guess in the long run she causes as much damage to the place as the

64
money she brings in. Shes also good for my image. A guy sees a woman like that in
here, and he comes back looking for more the first chance he gets. He might not find,
but while hes looking, hes drinking. I got a lot of respect for a woman like that. It
takes a lot of nerve to lay belly-to-belly with every guy thats got the price. Ive been
in this business for 20 years and Ive seen some real cases come through those doors.
Ive seen her straighten guys out that Bellevue gave up on. Shes got a soft spot for
people with problems, and she knows how to turn the pressure off. Id give a few
bucks myself to get next to her, but Im strictly business. A few rolls with her and Id
be giving her the place, but Ill bet it would be good while it lasted. I got a 26-year-old
son who follows her around like a tit-sick hound whenever hes in town. Clarence.
Hes got a little law practice across the river and comes around about once a month,
gets blind drunk, and tries to kill himself. When that fails, he tries to get laid. But hes
too young and too proud to demean himself by paying for it. He wants it for nothing,
or for a few kind words. He says it should be reciprocal. She wont even let him sniff
her armpit. It nearly drives him crazy. He doesnt know whether to love her or hate her.
He buys her a few drinks, tries to impress her with legal double talk, then tries to scare
her by mentioning the names of a few vice cops, judges and congressmen. Hell, shes
probably laid every cop and judge in the state, right up to and including the governor.
She could probably have him disbarred if she wanted. He keeps throwing out the bait,
and she keeps stripping his hook. Sometimes I feel like telling him, but shes too
damned cute. I mean, I like seeing that arrogant little horseshit sweat, even if he is my
son.
Excuse me, but I got a turkey sandwich waiting on the stove. Its not real turkey,
but that salted turkey-roll that comes wrapped in pigs intestines. It makes the beer
taste better.

Canto

Cass was Not paying much attention to the bartender. The white-toothed grin of
the gray-eyed Galea was bewitching and bewildering his sensibilities. She was
drinking crme de menthe and crooning suggestive words to him through the mirror,
flirting with a wantons eye, nursing and primping, untangling fallen curls, tapping
winsome signals of possible intrigues with her polished nails on the bar, waiting
patiently.
Like a slithery anaconda, she slid from the stool and led him without words into
an orgy of suggestion; she touched his hand on the way to the ladies room with her
harpys talons, and his eyes took flight. He followed, responding to her fingertips, the
touch of her hand against his leg. Her white teeth flashed and her tongue twisted and
lied and tasted the inside of his mouth. From a distillery of illusion, strange words
impaled on her tongue -- passed unspoken between them. The bartender grunted in
distaste.
She slipped like a shadow from the lounge without moving the air, pausing in
front of a mirror to examine her rosy mouth. With eyes full of haunting light, she
invited him to follow close behind.
In her gold metallic dress, she led him down the street and up the stairs. She
moved with a rapacious gait, one that stirred the hungers of a savage soul. Her firm,

65
well-defined, preciously cupped buttocks shifted invitingly beneath the shimmering
textures of her skin-tight dress. The fingers of her right hand tapped an anxious beat
upon his wrist.
Like a lamb bound for a shearing, he followed close behind devouring the scented
wake that pillaged his nostrils. From the position that was his alone, he leaned forward
and placed a kiss upon the left cheek of her peach-bottom bum. The polished nails of
her graceful fingers snared a piece of loose meat on his wrist; the pain was followed
by the sound of air escaping from a punctured tube, as she inhaled through clenched
teeth. Her words were drawn sharp as knives on smooth wet leather.
You naughty boy, dont be so impatient.

Canto

Her apartment was furnished like a downtown thrift shop. Semi-precious knick-
knacks and dime-store sculptures decorated the rooms. Curios intended to obscure
those days to come when her flesh would fall in brittle crinkly wrinkles from her
lovely face. Mementos for the days she would need to wear form-fitting bras to give
her bust that added lift. But nothing would smooth or support the skin that would hang
loosely from her arms and thighs.

The mementos were stationed deliberately among her precious books, books so
freely given by admirers, and so carefully accepted, as if an unpopular volume would
reflect a personal deficiency. The Philosophy of Kirkegaard, a few books on Jungian
psychology, a copy of Goethe in German, and other contributory offerings, Rostands
Cyrano DeBergerac, and Dostoyevskys Crime and Punishment.
Two painted imitation Edwardian chairs with the legs sawed off just below the
knees squatted on the floor; an overstuffed love seat of an undetermined period, and a
low curving couch nestled in the bay window. window shades with tassles, green
folding shutters, red fabric walls, and plastic Tiffany lamps, cast a gypsy spell over the
room, while medieval caricature tiles lined the fireplace. There was an assortment of
ornamental boxes, glass, brass, wood, copper, silver, gold and jeweled, scattered
indiscriminately throughout the apartment, while a giant urn with a plastic tree stood
in the corner.
Like a theater lobby, everything had been arranged as if it were intended to last
the life of the carpeting. There were few attempts to maintain integrity, only
perseverance.
The bedroom was subtle and concealing; not a stocking, tube of lipstick or piece
of jewelry was in sight. Only the slightly crumpled surface of a queen-size spread
suggested or implied nocturnal habitation. Conditioned for maximum comfort, the bed
would not allow a prospective victim to escape without being drained of all natural
liquids, and a thorough purging. The bed itself was a part of her mystique. It was here,
in darkness, a darkness that challenged infinity, where she was thoroughly awakened.
The beast chained within, the beast that enslaved her was unshackled and permitted to
feed, to spend itself in violent throes against the forces that had driven her into the
concealing darkness. It was her nature to sleep by day, to hunt and feed by night.

66
 She turned the tap on in the bathroom to confuse his senses while she pissed. The
music of her water splashing against the white enamel bowl as he watched through the
keyhole was out of tune. Holding a mirror between her legs, she rummaged through
the foliage studying the scarlet lips that swelled between her legs.
Stay out of my purse! She shouted from the bathroom, as she browsed through
her bush. His organ swelled to twice its normal length. He freed it eagerly from the
constriction of his trousers. It rested heavily in his hand, throbbing and alive, a small
excited animal eager to kill or feed. Its tiny mouth appeared to gasp for air, a fish out
of water. He let it drop, but it bounced back.
She stood up, reached between her legs with a handful of tissue and sponged her
croft. She dropped the paper in the pot and watched it spiral out of sight. She mumbled
something about the vast reservoir of shit the city was stockpiling, blew her nose in
tissue and flushed it away.
The swelling in his hand vanished as quickly as it had occurred. His drive shaft
disengaged. He twisted the foreskin in his hand.
There is enough skin her to make a matching pair of lampshades.
He released it and it lapsed into a coma. It showed not the least indiction of
returning to life.
Help!help! he cried, Its sleeping and it wont wake up!
Quiet, she said, What kind of woman do you think I am? Do you want to wake
my husband? Whats the matter with you?
He directed her gaze to his flaccid piece. Its my engine, he said. I think its
blown a gasket.
She sat cross-legged on the bed and examined the soft piece of flesh. Now how
do you suppose that happened?
I was told it might, he said.
She cocked her head. By whom?
Doctors, he said.
Are you Ill?
No, these were head doctors, he said, screwing his finger around his temple.
Why were psychiatrists analyzing your cock?
They werent analyzing it, they were telling me what might happen.
Why might it happen? she asked staring curiously.
It might happen because of what Ive done.
And what have you done thats so terrible your cock wont stay awake?
I killed a few people.
She thought about his words. Anyone I know?
How many people do you know living in Southeast Asia?
Not many, she said. And you?
A few.
Apparently. Did you have to kill them all?
No, but once I got started
Yes, I know; it was difficult to stop.
Youve heard this story before?
Yes, but why you? Why did you have to do it?
Thats the one question they never asked.

67
 Whos they?
The head doctors; they never asked me why? Why did you do it?
Do what?
Why did I have to take remove my clothes to kill a bunch of Asians.
Well, Im asking you now. Why did you do it?
I had to do it?
why did you have to do it?
I had to do it because, if I didnt do it, I would have shit my pants?
You had to take your clothes off and kill a bunch of people, because if you didnt,
you would have shit your pants?
No, it was the other way around. If I didnt take my clothes off and kill a bunch
of people, I would have shit my pants.
Let me get this straight, if you didnt take your clothes off and kill a bunch of
people, you would have shit your pants.
Yes, thats why I did it.
Why you did what? Killed a bunch of people, or took your clothes off, or shit
your pants?
I took my pants off so I could take a shit, because I was afraid that if I didnt take
a shit, I would shit my pants when those flat-headed Asians attacked. If I shit my pants,
I would have die of shame. No matter how dead I was, I didnt want to die with shit in
my pants.
So you took your pants off to take a shit?
Yes.
And thats when the flatheads attacked?
Yes
And then
I didnt have time to get dressed, so I cut my shirt off and took off. I figured if I
made it through, I could come back and get my pants. If I couldnt get back, I could
steal some dead guys clothes, if they werent full of shit. If I died, I was dead, but I
didnt want to enter eternity with my pants full of shit.
I see, she said. And thats how you became a hero?
He shrugged his shoulders. No one ever asked me why.

She took his penis in her hand; it responded to her touch. I think it just needs a
little TLC.
She swayed slowly back and forth, mimicking the movement of a snake charmer
blowing on a flute.
The scent of the cologne she had sprinkled liberally throughout her nest soon
reached his nostrils. His animal stood stiff and erect and watched her with its unseeing
eye. She caressed it tenderly.
I knew there was plenty of moxie left in it.
She bent over and took it in her mouth. Umm, its got a slot in it big enough for
quarters.
He closed his eyes. His thoughts flowed toward his loins. She continued to work
it over in her mouth. Her action became rhythmic, as if her mouth were a direct link to
her womb. She began building up power, raw power, enough to knock her out. Shed

68
screw his length of pipe into her deep canal and turn off the safety valve. Then hed
pound the fuck out of her until he came, and she came in a deluge so great that his
pipe would melt and the steam from her furnace would blow them both halfway to hell.
He slipped his hand between her legs and the breech widened. Heat emanated
from her bush; a sticky effluence clung to her nest. The Israelis called it manna;
spiritual food, divine sustenance. He found her ass and probed it with his thumb. Her
sphincter tightened and relaxed. He slipped a finger in, and then another, and another,
until his hand was halfway up her foggy bottom. He wanted in up to his elbow, but he
was meeting some resistance. Her body opened like a flower. She took his full length
into her mouth and throat and gagged. He struggled with the sphincter in her ass. It
was expanding like a serpent devouring a pig. A Von Sacher-Masoch whine slipped
softly from her throat.
He continued to probe. He rammed his hand inside and played Jack Hammer in
her colon. She let go a mighty groan, rolled away from him and disengaged. She came
and he came. She grabbed his hand and kissed the violating fist. She rubbed her
breasts and her face with his cream sauce and placed his slick contracting sex between
her hands and legs; it rested peacefully in tropical temperatures.
Once between her legs, he discovered that he could enter her all the way to her
throat. Here he could reach in and turn her inside out, but she stopped him again. He
gently placed his hand on her hairy melon and fingered her as if she were a bowling
ball, and he a Polish kingpin.
Naughty, naughty, mustnt hurt momma, she said. You have a beautiful organ.
Youre the first to ever penetrate without a condom. Did you know I was a virgin until
I was 32? They used to call me the little princess. Just look at it, now it snaps at ever
pair of pants that walk by. I can have an orgasm holding a book on my lap. I think
were going to have some beautiful moments together, but first, lets shower, then you
wipe me and Ill wipe you. Ill use my tongue, if you will. Oh, youre no fun; if you
dont stop coming off in 30 seconds, Im going to suck your balls until you die; would
you like that?

Canto

He spoke like a madman, but when he was silent, his eyes conveyed the dream of
a hopeless youth bereft of reason and monumentally sad. She knew she could have
him anyway she wanted him: baked, broiled, under glass, on toast, or on the half shell.
She could turn him for hours or days on the spit of her desire, until she grew insensate
or bored. He was one of the eternal adolescents who never aspired, conspired or
suspired. He would live and love for an eternity and never grow old or familiar or dull.
Each day would be a re-birth, and he would have to learn to walk and talk all over
again.
But first, she knew she would have to teach him subservience. She would have to
make of him a special chowder; he would become a liquid man of domestic spices, a
heedful of half-eaten vegetables, ox tails and pepper seeds. She would achieve her aim
by grinding her towering spiked heels into his throat and temples. Then she would take
him between her lithe and supple legs and break his neck, his skull, his spine, ribs,
pelvis and a few of his well-rooted incisors. She would grind and pound him until his

69
bones were a fine ash. Then and only then would she be able to reach him with her
voracious body and magnanimous soul.

She was becoming more and more convinced of his madness. The length of his
neck, the tilt of his head, and the undisciplined, unfocused eyes were all obvious
symptoms of madness. His distrust of everyone, his dislike of music, and his poetic
fingertip gestures were dead giveaways. She could have read him in any crowd. His
nostrils quivered in the wake made by every woman that passed by, and his ears
stiffened when they spoke. She could read him well. When she finished with him, she
would know him verse, chapter and page.
She believed him to be insufferably vain. He was not solicitous of her. He did not
ask for favors or money, even though he could have had both. He was slow to
acknowledge her presence whenever she was near, and this he did with a simple nod
of the head or a movement of his lower lip, though it was growing increasingly
annoying.
He was intolerably dirty all the time and smelled offensively. No one minded that
he did not mind, no one but Galea. She despised him for his slovenliness and loved
him for his enviable pride. The unclean barrier, however, prevented her from being
totally committed to his resurrection. For her, total commitment was difficult under
the most favorable conditions. She ordered him to bath. He responded by eating
garbage and wallowing in dog shit. She anointed him with cheap toilet water at every
available opportunity. She insisted upon it before he was permitted to enter her special
garden of delights; her suite of rooms located directly above the Royal Theater.

Alone together, their conversations began to take on more serious aspects. Her
spiritual guardian and father confessor, the parish priest, had once more introduced the
presence of Deity into her life. It was always a fascinating topic for her even if every
priest in the parish had tried to get between her legs with bribes of prayers and
indulgence. One priest claimed he had sent a holy writ to Rome begging the pope for
his indulgence and the canonization of sainthood for her.
Her hands were folded prayer-like, her head was bowed and her eyelids almost
closed.
So what about God? he asked, And this new relationship you have with the
clergy?
She unclasped her hands and made the Sign of the Cross. Is that any way to start
a conversation?
I just want to know whats going on. Cass replied.
Alright, what about God?
Youre repeating my question, he said. I asked first.
She shrugged her shoulders. I dont know. I dont know anymore now than I did
when I was a 16-year-old virgin. Besides, I dont know why you ask such an off the
wall question when our bodies are brought into such close proximity; ask me another.
He lit a cigarette and blew white smoke in the air; it made him remember things
hed rather forget. Each one of her rooms, he noticed, had its own special dcor.
The parlor was reminiscent of a Chinese restaurant with colorful beads and exotic
silk trinkets, along with pictures of Alice in Wonderland characters with slanted eyes.

70
 She shuffled a deck of playing cards and turned the top five up.
I dont have any answers for you today, she said. Take what I have to offer or
get out. This isnt a flea market. There are no hard driven bargains here. I deal in facts,
or I dont deal at all. And the card you turn up is the card that you play.
The cards were worn smooth from handling, and the features on the face cards
were distorted and maligned.
Now, which one is your God? and why? No, dont tell me, not just yet. First let
me here you articulate a lie. Go on, tell me a lie, something grand and blasphemous.
He scratched his lip; she turned up card after card.
Youre hard one to pin down, she said, But Im still looking, and Ill find
you.
He stood up suddenly and started toward the door. Touched a nerve, did I! Come
back, sit down, tell my why you want to run and hide.
He sat and pointed toward the cards.
Can you really find me in there?
She wiped the cards off the table and onto the floor with her hand in a single
sweep. The cards are full of shit, she snarled. Nobody really knows but you.
Knows what?
Knows what is eating you. What makes you, and breaks you, what scares you,
what hurts you, or busts you up into tiny fragments of the nothing that youve
become.
He could not contain the sorrow and self-pity he was feeling for himself. A
strangling sob wrung a few tears from his eyes.
She started to laugh. Fake! Fake! I know a fake when I see one. Dont tell me
those tears are genuine. I know you better than that. Your heart is made of ice and
your soul is made of pitch. Your conscience is as double edged as a razor blade, and
you dont care who or what you kill, just as long as you are not the victim. I know
your face, sad man, I know you well.
She crumpled up an empty cigarette pack and threw it on the floor.. Her two Great
Danes walked to the center of the room, smelled and licked the pack and walked away.
There was nothing left for Cass to do. Murder, he thought, but that was too
thorough and final. He wanted to sleep with her again and keep finding pieces of her
conversation in his life. But there was nothing left to do or say.
He rubbed his crotch and pointed toward hers. She lit a match and threw it in his
hair. There was nothing left to do. He took a poem he had written from his pocket and
read it to her.
Not a Shelley or a Keats, she said, But who gives a god damn. I love you
darling for thinking about me for however long it took you to write that atrocious
piece, but please dont ever bother to do it again. I like you just the way you are,
without the crown of laurels.
He tried to feel her breast, but she pretended to be indignant. She slapped his hand
and kicked him viciously in the groin. He dropped to his knees and doubled up in pain.
the dogs pounced playfully upon him and tried to mount him from behind. Cass
struck them with his fists and kicked at them as he struggled to his feet. Galea laughed
until the dogs retreated from the room.

71
 He eased into a chair and drank without pause what remained of a half empty
bottle of wine, pouring it down his throat. She watched from the bed in the next room,
where she had run shedding her clothing along the way. She laughed and tempted him
with trembling white thighs, as she stood and bounced on the mattress, her abundantly
dark bush a raven nestling between her thighs.

The dogs barked. They were hungry and in need of exercise. George had not
returned to feed or walk them in days. Galea refused to leave her rooms, to feed them
or herself. Kass was sick of self loathing and had spent his money on whiskey and
wine and lay in a pool of vomit. The odors of corruption filled the air.
The dogs howled. Galea cursed them, crashed on the bed and buried her face in a
pillow. Kass moaned and tried to fill his stomach with water; but it would not stay
down. At the same time, a headache was splitting his skull and taking its toll. Nothing
he did relieved the pain. He feared it was a brain tumor and his erections were
numbered. His life and his loving hung in the balance.
He tried to find his way around the inside of his head, but managed somehow to
walk directly into pain. He blamed the sun and the soot; the barking dogs and Galea,
and the white porcelain of the bathroom bowl. He even blamed a memorable erection.
It was a rigid throbbing erection that Galea had declined to accommodate. He had
tried to break it off when she drove him from her bed -- to break it off and beat her
unmercifully to death, but failed miserably. Once again, it extended itself, painfully
alert to her inaccessible presence.
Her body appeared to be going through a physiological change; she tossed and
turned, babbled incoherently, rocked and rolled violently back and forth. Her eyes
were closed and both palms were pressed against her temples, as if she too were trying
to repress the contents of her mind. The rolling eventually subsided. Before she settled
down, she kicked the sheets and blanket from the bed.
Cass vomited. He had consumed too much of the cheap sticky-sweet brew in too
short a period of time. His head was throbbing and his arms and legs ached from
collisions occurring with walls and doors on the way to the bathroom. He was still
nursing a terribly painful erection that refused to abate. When he finally emptied his
stomach, he focused his eyes on the bedroom door, his enemy. He swayed
precariously and slowly made his way to the reclining motionless body. Her breasts
rose and fell with her breath. He lowered his eyes, examined the taut cantilevered
erection projecting from his pants, stumbled and fell unceremoniously on top of her.
She groaned but failed to move from harms way.
Fe, fi, fo, fum,
I smell the blood
Of a pudendum.
His body succumbed and contracted in unconstrained laughter. The dogs whined
nervously, licked their lips and put their front paws on the bed. Kass slapped their
damp noses with his hand and drove them out of the room. He heard them whining
and snarling threateningly, while he crawled between and lifted her legs up and over
his shoulders.
I love little pussy
Her coat is so warm,

72
 And if I dont hurt her
Shell do me no harm.
Her body began to undulate like a rising sea; he was a tiny skiff, a bark, an ark, a
stiff corpse on a timeless voyage to no place in particular, but with a load of hot
volcanic, sizzling, shooting, rocketing comets destined to be lobbed into the deep dark
Black Sea, into the dark grottos where vehement eyeless Gog and Magog crawl
through and about the twisted helix, splitting atoms and pubic hairs, vulvas parting
like the Red Sea, swollen tides, bursting dikes, warm primitive bath in aching gooey
soup, flowing nectar, cup of sorrow and disease,, swamping, seeping sewage of
carnivore cunt.

Canto

About this preoccupation with God, There was still no response.

His eyes searched the distant corners of the ceiling for traces of the cobwebs he
destroyed yesterday. Galea glared at his barely noticeable Adams apple. God was no
longer a question in her mind. She no longer concerned herself with dual-natured grief.
One must not attempt to split divinities.
His eyes surveyed the walls and eventually returned to her. You do recall our
discussion about God, dont you? he asked.
Somewhere in the attic of her mind, there was a vague memory of a mild,
irrelevant banter with him about the creator of the phallus, the father image, and the
introverted psyche of a young girls envy of her Supreme Fathers mighty scepter. She
savored the memory and experienced a near emission between her legs and dismissed
the question from her mind.

The Devil doth in snares our lives enfold;

four hooks has he with torments baited well;
and first with Greed he casts a might spell.
And then to fill has net has Pride extolled;
And Luxury steers the boat and fills the sail,
And Perfidy controls and sets the snare.
May God preserve us and the foe expel.

The words of Thibauts poems filled her mind. Poems shed heard since time
began.
Are you convinced now of Gods ineffable nature? His questions bounced off
the wall and echoed down the cluttered corridor of her mind. Once she would have
drunk deeply of those words that nourished her soul. But now he was just a burly,
beefy, bulky, pudgy, plump and paunchy, roly poly, round and porcine, black-robed
pig with a penis like a Vienna sausage.
Her lips turned up in a soft smile as she imagined his skimpy sausage wrapped
neatly in a strip of bacon, fried and shrunk to the size of her pinky.
Do you believe in the omniscience of God? He raised and folded his hands
behind his head. She stared at his arms and visualized the cocked leg of a dog
urinating against a tree. Behind neat fingertips, she tried to conceal a smile. He leveled

73
a broad friendly grin, patted the hand she held neatly folded in her lap, and walked
back to his desk, the skirt of his cassock tangling about his leg.
Remember that God is watching you, and you will have to account to him for
everything you say or do.
She bowed her head reverently, resting her chin upon her chest, and fell to
wondering about her breasts concealed warmly beneath her plain cotton sweater. She
thought of touching them but decided to wait until she returned to the theater. After all,
it had been such a long time since they had been touched.
God will not tolerate promiscuity among his children. His voice intruded like a
stifling lethargic on her thoughts. He would bore her to death with his subtle
denunciations. How much better, she thought, it would be if he attacked her, beat her
with his belt and called her a whore or prostitute, while tearing the clothes from her
body. But he was a Christian man; he would bore her to tears. She would assent to his
wishes in order to escape his droning voice.

She closed her eyes as she thought of the delicate impression her warm naked
body had made in the white snow inside the bishops garden. Her body blushed at the
memory of the teenage boys who had undressed her, placed her in the shower and then
threw her into the snow. It had happened so many years ago, but had left such a lasting
impression; she had loved them for that act of martyrdom.
The raw discordant voice cried out again. God will not sanctify impure desires!
She moved easily in her chair. All her desires were pure. Each and every breath she
inhaled was pure desire. It was no longer possible to reason away the pure desire that
she felt. Her only alternative now was to allow, to permit, and to liberate herself
completely from every restriction the world had ever imposed on her. She could no
longer deny herself the privilege of pure desire.
In the future I hope you will trust to God and to Jesus Christ and not expose
yourself to such terrible dangers again.
She nodded in accordance with his wishes. But she thought: What does he know
about Christ? Hes never held him between his legs, or pressed his mouth against his
lips, or even touched his wounds. Does he think that just because he knows his name
that Christ loves him? Christ is no such fool; I know. I have lived with him. I am his
bride. I wear his ring.
He came for me, took me from my home and into his church. He took me into
his arms and carried me to his church and laid me at the foot of his altar. He also made
me promise not to tell anyone what he was going to do. Right in church, with God and
his angels and his saints floating all around, he screwed me. He turned me over every
which way and drove that garlic flavored sweet piece of kosher meat clear up to my
eyeballs. He told me that I was the first piece hed ever had, but he didnt act like it.
He knew just what to do to make a woman feel good. I could hear the angels singing
and the organ playing. It was the most sacred thing that ever happened to me. Nothing
in the world beats getting screwed in a church by Jesus Christ.

She searched his eyes for permission to leave. He gazed at her impatiently and
then directed her to leave. She sprang quickly to her feet and hurried out the door and
down the hall and disappeared into the first restroom on the floor.

74
 Her heart was pure, but all the prayers of holy men could not remove her grief.
She removed her sweater and bra and touched her breasts, twisting the nipples
between her fingers. She pressed her lips against the mirror. A tear ran down her cheek.
Pure love was gazing into a mirror and pressing lip-to-lip.

Canto

He met her at noon. When they got to the beach, it was gray and abandoned. They
walked on the beach with newspapers in their hands and rain in their eyes. The rain
fell in despairing degrees, and their clothes got all wrinkled and wet. They sat on a
bench and the rain beat down on her thighs. She looked almost naked. They covered
their heads with a dripping wet shirt and tried to change things with a joke and a laugh.
The boardwalk was clean of dirt and debris, and her shoes clopped and skipped on
the wet shiny boards. He held her beside him to keep her from tripping or slipping in
the sand or the sea. He held her tight to keep her from drifting too far away on the
green sea. They sat huddled beneath the pier, built a small fire, and watched the foamy
breakers splash upon the beach.
They drank coffee in an empty caf. The waitress ignored them. He spoke in dull
whispers. The cold rain beat at the windows, and at the edge of his brain. She listened
and nodded and made hardly a sound, meekly dismissing the star-crossed words he
dropped at her feet.
She sat quietly listening in a warm comfy place, while pulling water and squeaks
from her hair. Her white legs glistened like ivory tusks, while he wiped her calves and
her thighs with a towel. She laughed and smiled through her marble gray eyes.
They went to a movie; he spent all his cash. He laughed at the cartoons, but the
feature was bad. He took a chance and tried to steal a kiss, but she turned her mouth
away. The cola was warm, the popcorn salty. When they finally gave up and went
back to the city, it was raining so hard they had to take a bus.

Canto

Sometimes she would talk and he would listen. Her beautiful mouth twisted and
tempted words out of her dark fancy, and she would spin a dreaded yarn of voyages
and voyeurs. As they walked through the crumbling gypsy streets, he would listen and
follow with his clever eyes the notes of her voice. As she scaled peaks emotional and
dangerously steep, too steep for naked dreams to scale, her words would pursue a
novel tide, while his mind and heart escaped.
She would talk, spinning the hours away with a silken net of words, disparaging
and deceitful, but lovely to take into the ear and lock in the mind. He listened,
jealously guarding every jewel that fell from her lips, and encased it in a memory. He
fed her little compliments, a lubricating gel, to stimulate her words.
When she lied, he did not question her, though he knew the lie. And when she
cursed him in her arcane argot for knowing too much about her soul, he bowed his
head and apologized. And when she tired of his madness and refused to speak, he
savored dismay, crawled and begged at her feet seeking forgiveness. But the only
solace she would provide, would come in the form of a one word statement, such as

75
eat or suck. He would comply, and while he filled her request, she would whisper
into his ear the words he wanted to hear.

He spent days and nights in her bed watching the dust settle throughout the room,
and the shadows come and ago, and time age the earth
They spent evenings and weekends together, and whenever Cass found himself
doubting the things that cluttered his mind, they would walk through the streets
together, hand in hand. The sidewalk artists would unfold their canvases like sails and
disappear beyond the horizon. Their cheap charcoal and pastel portraits would pale in
comparison beneath the thrill of her sotto voce.

The hot breeze from the vents in the street would panic beneath her skirt and she
would deny them with the palms of her hands. Cass would whisper his desire and she
would spread herself against a wall like a Japanese fan with oriental prints painted on
the leaves and her eyes would be impossible to read or otherwise understand.
In the evening, when they tired of strange faces and visions others didnt
recognize, they would walk to the Lute and the Lyre, and listen to the black poet
Dangerfield read his way through a dozen moods and a hundred hungry sounds. His
blind eyes could see beyond the pale masks and penny orchestrations of protest,
rebellion and creativity. He knew the souls dark interior, the doubt and fear that drove
men into the street, into the arms of women, and into the dark and hopeless labyrinths
within their hearts.
They would listen to his colorful lies and negative truths and he would lose them
in the silent background of an echo he called life. As they wandered homeless, without
cause or element, he would lead them back again into a haunted world of words and
Stonehenge parables.

Canto

Inside the Lute and Lyre, the poet Dangerfield stood on the table gesticulating
and flaying the air wildly with his red tipped aluminum cane. Titus Peachy watched
him through the weary eyes of a jilted lover of the arcane.

Bound by the adamantine chains of morality, I threw myself upon her and strove
magnanimously to divest myself of the inundating tide that threatened to emulate me
should the dam of abstinence remained intact, he began in a lengthy harangue.
The conspicuous desire to excel, surpass, usurp, to extend into infinity, exploded.
Like a battering ram, I smashed relentlessly against the mystic chasuble of the moated
womb in a desperate desire to return to the source of all being.

From behind the bar, Cleo cried out mockingly; Poet! Surpass thy self!
Dangerfield was silent as the laughter subsided, and then he continued his
narrative. Demanding from me the strength and imagination of all creation, her pleas
for proof of my human genius invoked new meaning and purpose in my life. I drove
my endless cord of misery into her dark and mystic labyrinth. Like a satiric and
abandoned Pan preying upon a fallen woodland doe, I ravaged and consumed in

76
mortal passion, the fair and innocent maiden called Cleo, the white and fragrant flower
of desire, the sweet meat upon which my poetic fancy feasts.
Cleo challenged him with another mockery. Poet, why hast thou exhumed my
faithless pride?
Dangerfield returned quickly to his seat. The contentment he felt barely eclipsed
the shame he was feeling at being unable to offend the virago Cleo. He had succeeded
in placing a curse upon her, the curse of having been laid by a crepitating old Black
man. In his estimation however, it was more degrading than being forced to inhale the
odors of rotting worms. It regrettably did not upset her as much as it upset the southern
peaches he had spoiled in his youth. He signaled for another glass of beer and it was
placed wordlessly before him.

Canto

Galea returned to her apartment. Cass remained at the L&L. He had sensed some
interest and acceptance in Cleos eyes and wanted to fathom her depth. While he sat
and waited, he removed a tablet from his pocket and in a barely audible voice he
began to read the gleanings from his own meager harvest of words.
I am of a race that has never seen the light, and my skin has paled and turned
white in the darkness of my eternal night.
Cass flipped rapidly through the pages stopping to read only his most select
writings: I concrete my prayers about your feet Sorrow is a most pleasant word,
for those who never rise about the lilt of their own prose I hear the heartsick
martyrs screaming for the nails, and I see the vultures roosting on the cross.
He ignored the disturbance created by Tituss presence in the bar, while Titus
ignored the owners pleas to leave. Peachy claimed he was inflicting an injustice on
the powerless and poor.
What am I to do? I have no trade or profession.

The virago Cleo walked by the table and flashed a carnal smile. Cass watched her
angry backside ripple and force men to father vulgar dreams. He leaped forward like a
dolphin to frolic in her fragrant scent. Titus scowled his disapproval. Casss eyes
flickered behind a toothy grin.
Youve been away too long, Titus. Youve forgotten how to assess a good piece
of butt. Just to look at a pair of nice tits probably causes you to swoon. You cant keep
your sanity and live in a vacuum. Youve got to get close to a city, where you can
jump off spinning wheel once in a while and get laid, maybe even spend some time
with teenage girls who dont know any better. You got to do something once in a
while to crack that wall that springs up inside a mans head when hes left alone with
his own thoughts for more than a few days at a time.

Canto

Titus could not take his eyes off the two pool shooters in the back of the caf.
When they racked their cues, he left Cass sitting alone at the table talking aloud to

77
himself. He stuffed a pool cue down his trouser leg and walked stiff legged out the
door.
A chalk tipped cue scoring up the inside of his ass. What a treat; what an
excruciating treat. It would split him right in half, divide the left from the right, and
win him laurels from the envious death-hungry poets. People would travel miles to see
his cue ravaged colon. Medical schools would take photographs, and doctors would
talk of his ploy for decades to come.
He would have to walk backwards on it and keep walking. Even when the tip got
hung up on an intestinal turn, he would have to keep walking backwards, bent over
forward, but backward. The pain he knew would be excruciating.
More than likely, the exercise would fail and he would be laughed at by interns
and nurses and doctors and the Sally Blue Gowns, who gave patients spit baths and
played with the balls of young and handsome men.
He removed the cue from his trousers and speared it through a poster. It was a
good idea, but lacked practicality. The key, he decided, lay in something simple and
practical. So simple and practical it escaped detection. What was it, a pistol, knife,
piano wire, arsenic, a speeding freight train? It made him dizzy to contemplate the
many moods of death.

Canto

The clock in the square struck twelve. Cass stuffed a dry piece of hard bread into
his pocket, sipped the last few drops of his beer and left the restaurant without a word.
Cleos eyes followed him into the street where he stopped undecided for a moment,
and then walked quickly away.
The nights belong to thieves and pimps, he said aloud. He was fascinated by the
hollow strangeness of his voice echoing against the bare brick walls. He smiled,
musing to himself, as he walked swiftly and alone.
There are so few pretty young women, he said grinning, pulled the bread from
his pocket and stuffed one end into his mouth.
I need a pretty young woman with children who are sick and need my crust of
bread.
He laughed again. He remembered his struggles to seduce; the bungled evenings
flushed with failure, jaded with hypocrisy, and the sweet lying oaths that groaned
beneath the weight of his need. He pouted as he thought of lonely women, silent and
isolated within the secrets of their sex.
I am a student of life, poor and humble, but with great potential.
Thoughts of loneliness filled his eyes with crocodile tears. These are dark days
when men walk hungry through the streets and talk themselves into a rage of
friendlessness.
I embrace all of you, my hungry children.

Canto

He paused and gazed at a lighted cigarette glowing in the shadow of a doorway.

78
 I am full of shouts and could call you out of hiding with a scream, but I long to
touch a womans skin; I do not want to frighten you.
He approached with an unlit cigarette. His body thrilled to touch her hand as she
extended the glowing ember of her cigarette to his. With both his clumsy hands, he
cupped her tiny leather fist in his then drew his breath, deepened his voice and looked
into the shadow of her face. His mind would speak for itself res ipsa loquitur -- and
his needs would be apparent -- res judicata.
I want to spend the night with you, and turn you on the spit of my wildest
desire.
He could not see her face, but she did not remove her hand. He took money from
his pocket and pressed it into her palm. She stepped out of the shadow. The door
behind her opened and a sickly green light drove the youth from her face. She was
smiling and her fingers tightened like talons on his wrist. She turned and entered the
building. He followed behind her allowing the sharp odors of her body to rankle his
nostrils. A cheap red dress covered her spindly limbs. Somewhere inside her soggy
drawers he would discover her mark of excellence. Her arms, limbs, slim brown
serpents, slipped around his neck.
Oh, you nasty, nasty man, making little Anita fall in love with you; shame on
you.
Her turned his face from her whiskey breath.
I resent that, she said.
Clouds began to darken his eyes. Love is a hunter, he said.
What? She replied.
Love, in its hundred thousand ugly masks has become an integral part of my
daily ablutions, he said. I am a lover of the divine. Love is more powerful than
sunlight. Its presence melts the humble clay of flesh into spiritual putty. The lover of
the divine love is a naked sinner who showers in starlight and his urine is as life giving
as the morning dew. His revelries are dreams that range across the universe and fall
like singing meteors into volcanic thoughts. His days are lived in silent prayer and his
spoken words are music. He is a wizard in that he is a man whose sacrifice is living
and toiling among a million other men whose love must always remain silent. He is a
waterfall in that he is a voice muffled only by the machinery of living. He is a dream
in that he is alive and obtrusive. His pain is silence. There is genius in his humility,
and in his honorable existence, and finally in his naked and glowering madness.
I do not know from what mystical corner of the city he derives his energy. It is as
if he has found a spot where the suns rays burn with greater intensity, and the moons
refractive powers concentrate their magical beams. Perhaps the food that nourishes his
body has been tainted with some chemical substance whose qualities affect the
chemistry of the mind, and his wisdom and beauty are the symtoms of a merciful
death. He moves too slowly for a man so deadly. His arms are short and barely reach
his pockets, and his hair is a tangle of knots. I dare not even wish him peace for he is
too lovely to live without pain and grief.

What? she said.

See how clouds darken skies that yesterday were shot with azure blue; love is not
affected, but man is twisted and broken, and carved in half.

79
 What does the sky have to do with love? she asked.
Oh, I love the sky; love is the sky, and the only hunter. I love the immaterial sky
and the immortal hunter.
You talk crazy, she said, shaking her head. I hope I dont have to listen to that
stuff all night.
Yes, he replied. My tongue is a waltzing waterfall.
You never told me your name, she said, touching the fly on his pants.
What did you do with the money? Cass asked.
What? she replied.
The money, where is the money I gave you?
The money for fuck I keep, she declared.
I want it back, Cass said.
She sealed his mouth with vulgar kisses, stuck her serpents tongue into his mouth
and licked his wounds.

Canto

The night swept in on soft and silent blue-black wings and surrounded them
completely. Peace and order clamored for a foothold among the stars. The dread of
loneliness and unreqitted love stalked the street dressed in an evening shroud of
misery.
Negrita Nita draped a brown arm around his neck and combed his hair with
negress nails. The cops, the pros and hustlers exploded in multi-colored glory on the
street. Cass simmered in a hungry stew of shadows from his forgotten past. Negrita
Nita stabber her saber tongue into his ear. Winos fell from darkened doorways and
rolled into the street. Cass grinned; a sea of doubt and pity washed across his troubled
brow. Visions from the past filled his eyes. Nita wiped doubt and regret from his
trembling lips and whispered pleasant secrets in his ears. Her strange and curious eyes
assured him they were lies. He cupped her face within his hands and lavished
toothsome kisses on her spoiled lips.

He took her hand in his and wrapped an arm around her neck. They glided down
the street. Their shadows loomed ahead of them then quickly disappeared. Laughs
tumbled from the open brownstone windows and fell into the gutters. The paint and
powder Saturday night air was full of broken glass and whiskey breezes.
Nita stalked the eyes and pants of each lonely man that passed. Suggestive
whispers followed after her, teasing her ankles and flirting with her fleshless calves..
She howled and praised her reckless womans bar-fly life.
Kass skulked with shame in her dark and Coptic shadow. The love of sex flowed
through her veins and filled her overflowing eyes. He donned a mask of plaud
sobriety, while the citys traffic whirled upon the universal streets of whoredom.
Whores shall live to celebrate mankinds death, he murmured, while souls of
the muted dead cried, Vengeance is mine!

Canto

80
 Ace of mammoth night and endless sky spread behind her open mouth and
crimson tongue. Flame-tipped flicks danced across the eye bright white of carnal teeth.
Blue jet of eyes sunk in cream, and lips of scarlet mouth sucking sin with every breath.
A small light from the street played gently over her face.
He fed upon her voice. She was there inside of him. He closed his eyes and
disappeared inside of her. Liquor flowed into his brain creating a vertigo behind his
eyes. Born to violent depravity by secret scalding eyes, guided by the talons of an
enchantress, in garbled metaphor his souls passion were perverted and exclaimed:
Do not let me die. I perish in the death of her embrace; a death I rush to willingly.
I am a frozen fish upon the burning sand, lying in the sun, dying in the sun. Passions
glow is in my eye. Oh, let me lie beside the lovely swan that eats the flesh of men.
The she-bane plied her witch of sex and drained the dream of life from out his
limbs. Pain and love and hate soon turned him round. Her wet tongue slashed his
catholic ear and heart. He moved upon her touch and breath.
To purge inside, to claim, to scream, to choke her sex to death. Holy sacred flesh
of tingling skin, defy God!
Cass struggled to feed her endless claim on life. She led him through a fumbling
moment of desire and then into her body, to the portal of her womb. She wrung from
him the bitterness and anger that strangled his great dream. Arrested in her womans
night, he wedded the power of his failing light to the magic of her spring. She drained
the poison paste from his heart and split the desire that divided him against himself.
He lay in tireless thought as Nitas midnight wisdom worshipped at his shrine.
She was a serpent prophet writhing and destroying future fears. She burned and
consumed in feverish vanity his masculine tirade. He dreamed. She gnawed the bone
from his head then bore his life away within her womb. Their bodies wrecked and
purged of need lay upon the bed. The tide of street sounds filled the room.
His male white length glowed incandescent in the soft light of the moon. Her
shadowy body reflected his spectral form. His mind and brain were empty or excuses.
She yawned and grappled with his sex, a gladiators ploy, seeking to apply a
stranglehold. He turned away. He eyed some distant image of perfection in his past.
She pouted and rested her sharp chin upon his naked hip.

I want your baby; She said. Give me a baby.

He ignored her waspish whisper.
Give me time to think, she pleaded. Let me sink into my soul and I will
produce I will create for you a gifted child, a wild beauty.
He pushed her off his hip. She sprang to her feet and cursed him. Her nakedness
was bold and daring, a dark and macabre dancer. She laughed and called him a coward.
She lay on her back and spread her legs in the air. His teeth nibbled the stringy meat of
her thin Browne thigh, which was in short supply. She laughed the ancient hookers
laugh. He plunged into her superb dark lie. The man of pride and shame and sorrow
lay concealed beneath his covert silence.
Just before she fell asleep, he spoke into her pillow. I am the voice of living
shadows caught within this half-dream life, this silent scream of time, cast upon the
stagnant waters of this sea fulminating sea of life. Grant me my one moment of peace;

81
grant that I may sleep and never wake to see the scourging eye of sunlight cark the
lonesome voice of bones I leave behind.

Canto

It was the scent of her body he remembered as he cruised once more through the
thick oppressive night. The streets were worn and weary of the ageless and
monotonous drama. Streetlights glared with an aura of menace. Cass turned a dark
corner and the muffled sounds of anger exploded in his brain. He fell stunned to the
sidewalk. The heels and gritty toes of inexpensive shoes smashed at his head and back.
He felt the shock and pain raining down upon his legs and arms. He feared for the
safety of his genitals and doubled up in a ball in time to deflect a blow with his knees.
They could not hurt him now. He lay like a post-hole beetle in a round perfect ball.
They stopped kicking. He lay in silence feigning unconsciousness. He could taste the
dirt and blood congealing in his mouth; it tasted good.
How strange, he thought, that I should enjoy the taste of dirt, as if it were a
sign that I am a living part of all that has come to pass.
He felt them going through his pockets.
What have I too lose? I am gaining; I am a part of every living thing, I cannot be
denied. Who will believe this swill of life Ive scarred?
He whispered softly to the nameless faces. Do not kill me, friend; who will sing
your ugly face to the world? I love your rotting teeth and stench. How wonderful it is
to be alive, and in such a filthy place! I am lying in the street, tasting my own blood
and the dirt from the bottom of your shoe. I am proud to be your victim. If you kill me,
I will never die; I will live inside you, the way others live inside me.
Blood dripped from his nose. His lips were sticky with clumps of clotting blood
and snot. His ribs and back throbbed from the beating. A sharp kick on the back of his
skull turned his lights out.
When he revived, once again he thought: How strange it is to still feel so good
about life, even though my body aches with pain.
It was almost a relief to realize that he was not immortal. He staggered wearily to
his feet. His head throbbed a blue ripe lump of pain. His nose was numb and swollen
against his face. His cheeks were cut and stained with blood. They had pummeled him
in the name of their god, and he was still strong and alive, and very much aware of
who and what he was.
He wiped the blood from his face with his hand. The lumps stood out upon his
cheeks and lips. This is a good life, he thought, as he smoothed his rumpled hair.

The streets were close and narrow. Gold-toothed women leered at him from
windows and doorways. His clothes were more wrinkled and wet than ever before.
My god, Im getting thin, he thought.
He felt his pocket for money, but it was gone. He stopped walking and sat on the
steps of a brownstone and stared at the sidewalk. He put his arms upon his knees and
rested his head.
I am a stranger, a widows son. Who will know and understand my pain?
He took his yellow tablet from his pocket and tried to write a poem.

82
 Canto

It had been raining all day. Cass hated the rain; it was a torrential torment. It fell
in such great abundance that it covered the streets like a sheet, bursting and splashing
in reckless abandon. Streets of black licorice bubbled with oily colors and hissing wet
needles. The deep water rose up and over the curb near the drains that were
desperately gurgling and swallowing residual filth. It knocked out the lights for ten
silent seconds then loosed a steady barrage of pummeling wet drops. It assailed the
glass in the widow and drummed with insistence; he hated the mindless assault.
At midday the sky was dark. The wind hustled through the alleys. At every corner
fist-hard gusts smashed and stung with furious jabs and biting animosity. After racing
passed the front desk and climbing six floors, the wind, smelling of mildew, rot and
foul weather, crawled and clawed maniacally under the door.
Cold and abandoned empty containers of coffee, milk curdling in the dregs, half-
eaten hot dogs and stale breakfast rolls cluttered the room. The dipso maid at the
Phoenix hotel couldnt make it to work. A small break in the windowpane admitted
the rain, while a pile of dirty underwear on the sill poisoned the air.
Cass rummaged through a pile of discarded shirts and pants. Peale watched from a
distance. He was too pre-occupied with his puppets to care. He was making a dress for
Godiva, an evening gown that revealed a single anatomically correct breast. Cass
paused at the door. Do you have any money? He asked.
Peale nodded and turned his pockets inside out. He laughed through a row of
yellow teeth stained with nicotine.
I cant afford my own vices these days, he replied. What makes you think I
can subsidize yours?
There were holes in Casss socks and shoes, his shirt was stained and his trousers
were wrinkled.
I want to get something to eat, he explained.
Peale took s tightly folded dollar bill from his pocket and gave it to Cass. Eat in
the restaurant downstairs. The food is cheap and not half bad. You can get an egg
sandwich for twenty-fice cents.
Cass frowned. Im sick of that place. I want something hot on a plate that I can
eat with a knife and a fork instead of my fingers.
If you have any change, bring something back.
Cass tightened his belt. Im not coming back, he said as if he meant it.
He laced u his worn out shoes. A rotten string broke. He threw it on the floor. The
shoe flopped at his heel when he walked toward the door.
Dont forget, we have a performance Saturday morning.

Cass spent the better part of the afternoon making his way downtown in the wet
driving discomfiting rain. By the time he Reached Cleos apartment, he was soaked to
the skin. The garbage can was open and sitting in the hall so it wouldnt fill with rain.
A recently opened and empty can of Franco American spaghetti had attracted a family
of roaches. The patriarch, with powerful but aged black wings, was overseeing the

83
banquet. A few medium sized roaches, with glistening feelers protruding from their
heads, were dancing around the remaining sauce. They were undoubtedly the members
of his harem. There were also numerous smaller roaches excited by the presence of the
great bounty. They waded and paraded around the sauce and gorged themselves.

In the warmth of Cleos apartment, the air was heavy with the aroma of spaghetti
and meatballs, garlic bread and butter. Pans and dishes soaked in the sink, in a pool of
greasy water. Food scraps littered the table. Ea, Cleos daughter, and Damon and Zane,
her two sons, sat cross-egged in front of the TV drinking glasses of grape juice.
Cleo wore a blue terry cloth robe and read from a dark covered book. Her glasses
hung from the tip of her nose. She seemed warm, clean and comfortable, composed
and content. Her eyes were bright and compromisingly soft. She smiled without
parting her lips and sat the book on the couch.

Cass removed his coat, wiped the water from his rain-battered face and hair, and
stepped out of his shoes. He sat on the couch as far from her as he could, and pressed a
crease in his dripping wet trousers with a thumb and forefinger.

How are things in the drama department? She asked smiling.

He shook his head. They keep coming, he replied, But were not making any
money. Peale invests it. He bought a share in a seafood store, but fish dont pay; they
just make me sick. Whenever I eat fish, I get sick and stay awake all night. I dont
even get excited over pizza anymore. You want to see the store?
You know my terms, she replied, as if every proposal or suggestion was an
invitation to intimacy or a planned seduction.
She smiled. He frowned and cast a sidelong glance at her and her youthful
daughter. He did not speak. He listened to his own thoughts and to the shrill
emanations coming from the TV. It was a strange, disturbing experience. He was not
accustomed to the unrelenting barrage of sound and intense activity flickering from
the tube.
Cleo rubbed his leg with her bare foot. Cass resented somewhat having his cold
wet trousers pressed against his bare shin. He smiled with difficulty. She took his hand
and ran her finger along his heart line, and then along the life line. She gently touched
the Mound of Venus, Jupiter and all the other less noticeable mounds in his palm.
This is the line that has brought you to me. It has brought you here so that I may
assist in unraveling your dilemma. If you listen to me you will hear the things your
heart longs to know. You will dream the long dream as only you know it exists. I can
help you, but only you will know for sure.
She teased him with brief and subtle glimpses of her knees and the white flesh of
her thighs. He struggled in vain to get a more compelling view of her legs and thighs.
He followed her restless movements throughout and nodded in profound agreement.
She kneeled at his feet and touched the holes in his socks.
These are quite significant, she said.
He laughed. Her hair was pinned up in a loose roll on the back of her head. He
removed a pin and a lock of hair fell over her shoulder. She sat motionless and stared
at the floor.

84
 I know you will not transgress, she said. The motions of our stars are
inconsistent with the germinating forces of the universe. No good will come of
defiance. I warn you; I mean well.
He removed another pin and the whole structure was undermined and cascaded
down around her shoulders.
Thats significant, he said.
Her shoulders trembled as she sucked air through her teeth, hissing like a snake
through partially closed lips.
We are not alone, she said cautiously.
The children were oblivious to everything except the tube that bathed the semi-
dark room in a phosphorescent light. He threaded his fingers into her hair opening and
releasing the bound curls and tangles. Her hair flowed into waves that washed down
her back. His body trembled as if from the cold in his heart. She rested her head on his
knee.
My body is in a mood to have a baby, she explained.
Her words sent violent shivers down his spine and deep into his groin. Little arctic
blasts of fear and dread touched his soul. The complexities and complications of the
mind and body were deep and involved. Her muscles began to slowly unwind beneath
his gentle touch.
I could take it out just before it happened, he said, but she pretended not to hear.
She knew that he was lying. He would not pull it out. The desire to stiff her, to drown
her womb in his suffocating substance would be too great. He would pour it out until
there was nothing left inside of him, and only then would he take the time to give a
thought to her.
You know the terms, she said, If you want to fuck than marry me.
Why on earth she would want to marry him he could not imagine; the son of a
widow, the enemy of man and God, and a stain on the fabric of society. It made no
sense.
He grabbed a fistful of pubic hair and laughed harshly in her face. She did not
smile, or even wince or complain of his bad breath.
If crap were too suddenly disappear from the face of the earth, the world would
not want for the loss of its odor, she said.
Cass yanked her to her feet. She did not flutter a lash or yield an inch beneath his
gaze. She took him into her arms.
Love, saith the minotaur, love is a blood red lie.
The earth beneath her naked body trembled.. She smoothed the strands of his
pubic hair with fingers soft and smooth as molten wax.
Love is a plume, a cry of joy, a song in spring; love is a womans finger in the
dark pudding of a mans asshole, he replied.
Their two bodies melted into a single pulsating mass of trembling, tumbling,
heaping, humping, squealing sounds of pleasure and permeation.

Canto

All night he camped between her swollen breasts, biting, licking inhaling her
fragrance, a banquet for the senses. The regions of her body, like an unexplored tundra,

85
tempted the resources of his mind: swollen dunes, fertile valleys, mountainous swells
and inviting flatlands.
Unmatched in performance, uninhibited in deed, he wrestled her to the earth,
threw her down and mounted her, and drove the demon spirits from her dark combine.
When they both lay vanquished and the metal with which they had slain the demons
lay broken on the field of battle, and the field ran bloody with the sweat of their labor,
he bid her wake and glory in the single flame that seemed to rise unquenchable in the
holy night. And she bathed again in the fountain of the flame; and she bathed and she
bathed, never to bathe again and the old man died.

Canto

Cass stayed with Cleo. She was full of torment and sizzling eggs, ripe for the
spearing, the hatching, the wide ovum birthing and man-child creating of an ageless
identity filling her out.
He slept in the hopeless white jungle of her skin, while street children whined
their loss to the distant stars. He wasted his days in dark brooding and sin, penance
and placation for the old worn men, the hungry and cold, the lonesome, the silent, the
sore and afraid.
Her sharp and deadly tongue turned him round about on his heels and brought him
back to original sin. He laughed and drank without stopping the hot rhubarb wine that
flowed from the tangled vines in her garden.
He slipped into and out of dream and awake, searching the valleys and alleys,
haunting the side streets and waiting for something to bring him back from the valley
of the dead, or to take everything away from him again.

He held his work, as a poet in exile, in contempt. He could not explain or

understand the lack of humanity in the simple, uncomplicated lines he tried to pen. He
meant to invoke a primitive indulgence in nervous pleasure, not sensual or oral, but
the pleasure of the spinal column and the super ganglia. It was not cruelly literate
prose or supinely libertine. It was a nervous hysterical love of saw-toothed edges and
plump round obsequies. It was a gossiping literature of the pancreas and the liver, an
interminably personal language devoted to the enlightenment of the circulatory and
digestive systems.
Regretfully, he was not too deeply devoted to his spleen, or even his convictions.
He merely entertained delirious fantasies and maddening daydreams. He also had an
insatiable hunger for human contact. To feel, smell and taste human flesh was the
ultimate gratification his senses sought. The primary impulse always left him hungry.
He had become insatiate. He spoke incoherently, gesticulated wildly and howled like a
wild dingo with ever-alarming frequency.
But he could not communicate or satisfy his needs. So he wrote. He wrote with
poisonous liberty. The words ran down the side of his mouth through his pen and onto
a page of anguish and despair. He remained insatiate through the whole ordeal. He
was always flesh hungry for a child to gnaw, a woman to masticate, an animal to
devour.

86
 The dark words continued to flow. He wrote his vocabulary away and when there
was nothing left, he dipped a pen into his blood and tears and worked out a scheme for
the funeral of words treading through flames that consumed his brain and down into a
vocabulary of indiscriminate pain.

And the flames healed his sorrow. And he was pleased. And he slept in a fleshy
tomb of warmth with a running spring that fueled his flame. At dawn, he discovered
her capable buttocks and with renewed vigor plied the ancient craft.
In deathless carnage, ranging and feasting with the gods immortal on vestal
virgins and teenage brides, he devoured and despoiled; he burned on the altar and in
the cauldron of betrothal, all the dreams and vows of selfish and singular concerns. He
vowed once again to the gods that he would never ask, never fail, and always gabble
and grapple with the live bait in the human snare.

She followed him across a universe of falling stars and synaptic implosions and
back to cognition. She preached moonlight in his ear and holy defilement while
sowing monsoon visions in his brain. She followed him through nights filled with
snake-bite charms, through trees and galaxies to panther lairs and galactic bliss. Her
timed eruptions ripped though the roof and voice of protest and widened the midnight
wake into an effervescent spurt of charnel-house dreams.

She nursed him and his doubtful child swelling like a tumor in her womb. She
never frowned or speared the ice pick of her discontent between her thighs; her
shapely battle booth glowed with warmth and contentment.

Canto

He told me that if I brushed my teeth with cigar ashes, I wouldnt get pregnant.
The doctor pressed the stethoscope between her breasts and over her heart.
My God! he shouted, What happened here!
He pointed to the scar tissue that covered her left nipple.
A nigger bit me, she said.
The doctor ran his finger along the scar tissue, examining it carefully.
The son of a bitch must have been a full-blown cannibal. Where you treated for
this?
She pressed his hand to her breast.
Yes, but it still hurts. Will you look after it?
He nodded and trembled and tried to disengage his hand. Cleo held it more tightly
against her chest.
Doctor, would you prefer to have me leave the room? The nurse asked
Her presence had escaped him for a moment. She rolled her eyes toward the
ceiling and tried to ignore his struggle to liberate his hand.
No, youd better stay.
He wrenched his hand free from her grasp. She covered her breasts modestly.

87
 If it doesnt lactate properly, we may have to go to surgery. However, I am
almost certain that it wont give us that much trouble. The baby, however, will have to
be fed from a bottle.
She buttoned her blouse.
Are you in a habit of not wearing a brassiere? he asked
Cleo smiled and inhaled. The nurse turned and fled the room.
Do you think I need to wear a bra? she asked.
Her twin mounds threatened to push him through the wall. He smiled and nodded
and trembled and backed out of the room. Cleo slipped into her shoes and followed
him out. He walked her to the door and scribbled out a prescription. When she reached
the door, she offered her hand. He shook it reluctantly.
Doctor, tell me, is there something more reliable than cigar ashes to keep a girl
from getting pregnant?

Canto

There were long silent moments with her that went beyond the narrow ken of
understanding. She wore his favor like a crown of scented blossoms. He amused her,
spent hours and days at her side listening to her stomach growl and grumble. When
she was hungry and tired and stunned by the effort it took too survive, she chose not to
speak. When he could find the courage and motivation to tear a page off the calendar,
or ask her to brew a pot of coffee, he would read to her from his tattered yellow
volume, which was overflowing with thoughts that came to him from every direction.
He would memorize a few of his own lines and the lines of other poets he had
unearthed and quote them to her while she bonded with children and scrambled eggs.
He became consciously aware of her eating habits and enjoyed watching her consume
things, especially food of color. She munched green and red salads covered with
Western yellow dressing. She was reluctant to sit at a table, as if the problem of sitting
and rising presented too many irresolvable difficulties.
The food seemed to be filling her out, but he knew it was the baby growing inside
her, fattening her arms and cheeks, and causing her feet and legs to swell.

He was losing volumes of weight through apocope. He dismembered words

between meals; spent hours sitting in the park reading repeatedly a single line he had
scrawled in his book. It was as if the shorter the word the more power they had to lift
him beyond his mundane and trans-ordinary plight.
Each episode he was privy to, he diligently recorded, as if it were the last of an
illusive and irascible genius that had run its course. It seemed as if he seldom had a
brilliant spurt of genuine originality anymore; the television interfered., or Cleo would
exhibit her nakedness at the precise moment he felt he was about to give birth to a
Word.
For a long time he had been desperately lonesome for the proof of his existence;
he was hungry for divination and truth. Cleo however outweighed him and knew in
her body the mystery of truth. While Cass carried nothing but doubt and disbelief in
his creative womb; she carried the answer to all womens concerns within her umiak.

88
 While she filled the washer with soiled sheets and measured out never-ending
cups full of powder, he watched with eyes that could not see the power of implication,
and with no thought or concern regarding consequences.
Barefoot and bare-bottomed, Cleo wore a white long-sleeved shirt with its pointed
tail dangling between her legs. She tip-toed through the jumbled jungle of laundry --
strewn upon the floor in random piles and colors -- until she found his empty arms and
elbows.
Pleading in his ear, she made him read more of the words he wrote, the words that
drove him to madness. While he spoke, she turned on the hot and cold spigots of
desire. Nothing shook her: she was the mother of design and exiles. She pitied him,
smothered him in child-bearing tenderness against his will. Full of cheer and sorrow,
bright diamonds, glowing inside his head, he felt the weight of baby flesh in his hand.
He felt the fetal thing in her body move against his hand.
Descendant of misery and abundant suicides, death mocked the unborn child from
a tranquil seat upon the brink of a running fever. Life and death, grist for the mill, bulk
for the diet, roughage for the universal colon.

Canto

Dimly lit halls; it seemed as if the world consisted only of dimly lit halls
permeated with the scent of cooking odors, floor wax and insecticide. Dimly lit halls
with dull and naked 25-watt bulbs dangling from cracked plaster ceilings. Doorknobs
painted black, worn out woodwork and stairs, overstuffed second-hand furniture,
stained bathroom bowls, and a veritable village of vermin, rats and mice, roaches and
centipedes crawling from under cavernous gaps in floorboards beneath the sink.

Cass slammed his foot down on a scampering roach. A white creamy pulp shot
from under his foot. The shell snapped and cracked, and his stomach turned in a spasm.
His eyes closed; air bubbles burst in his blood and brain, his stomach churned vile
tasting acids of discontent. He scraped his foot on the edge of a step.
Death had found another way to mark the passage of time.

He sipped a glass of raspberry wine and listened to liver frying in a pan. Hed had
a hard day on the street, bumming on the street, tipping over garbage cans, and
fighting cats and dogs for fish heads and day-old bread, rusty razor blades and broken
appliances. The holes in his socks matched the holes in his shoes.

Cleo was dressed like a sovereign of earth and air in her blue terry cloth robe. A furry
mammal crouched warily between her legs, sniffing liver, jet-blue flames and leaking
gas. Her little girl was splashing in the tub. The boys were watching television.
Ea bathed a squeaky rubber doll that drooled and wet and whose rusty eyeballs
failed to close. She crushed it between her legs, went into labor and gave it life,
breathing life into its pinhole mouth. The rubber baby moaned, sank to the bottom of
the tub and drowned in a rushing chorus of bubbles and afterbirth.

89
 Cleo sat five plates at the tiny kitchen table, wile the radiant and life-giving tube
glowed in the darkened living room. A patter or rain smoked the window glass. The
room became more heavily weighted with odor. He smelled the liver, bathwater and
jeans the little girl had worn. He smelled the breath of carnivore cunt and it lapped at
his ear.
She fed him a slice of beef liver and onions and cut off a piece for herself. The
children ate the heart, the kidneys and the soul, with milk and Browne bread spread
with a spoonful of jam.
Cleo sat at Casss side and it ate from his hand. He stuffed it with breadcrumbs
and forefinger meat. It swallowed them hole, never chewing or choking, He wiped his
fingers on her robe. She smiled and sliced off a piece of his liver and gobbled it down.

Canto

Her eyes were shark blue, a sign her baby was coming. Her stomach resembled a
glowing orb, a small fake moon in a comic opera. They rolled on the floor like young
animals. Ea smiled; she was full of envy for her mothers flowering garden. She sat on
her hands and made plans of her own. At five she could feel the anticipation.
He drank more wine and caressed her breasts whenever she passed within range
of his chair. While she cleared the table and washed the dishes, he rummaged through
her robe, testing her patience, challenging her decency. Flesh was his pleasure; it
aroused in him an intense challenge and thrill.
What had once impressed Cass as an intolerable encumbrance now filled him with
pleasure and awe: the mystery of conception. Children. Born of a magnificent
madness, an obsession of the body, a chaotic suspension in a universe of
infinitesimally small meaning. Seeds. Zygotes ripening like exotic fruit in a hothouse
womb and then leaping into meaning and character overnight.
The sacred art of giving birth, learned by the first woman at the foot of some
indefinable being who knew all things, who taught her to form flesh and bone, and to
shape it into a likeness not inconsistent with its own image; some all-knowing thing
that taught her how to shape eyes, ears, noses, mouths and lips; how to create lungs,
hearts, livers and kidneys, blood and an arterial system that carried everything
everywhere throughout the body; it taught her how to create intricate glands that kept
the entire system percolating within a hundred thousand million variations, and how to
make a brain. Then it taught her how to teach everything to work, to make the body
want to grow, Then how to make it all work together: the heart to pump and the brain
to think. And then after a few million years, the process had become so routine that
she forgot consciously how to do it. But by that time, it didnt matter. Her body had
the process down pat and it continued to do on its own what it had been taught to do
best, which was to reproduce itself, which it did without fail.

Kass became ill at the thought that he had been encouraged by his fellow
countrymen to destroy so many of those marvelous miracle machines; he tried to
rationalize and make himself believe that he had only killed the less perfect machines,
those machines that were not constructed according to the original US prototype, but
that prospect was equally absurd to his way of thinking.

90
 Taking life had nothing to do with reality. It was an outright denunciation of the
only thing that mattered. To deny others life was antithetical to all that life portended.
There was no other logical reason or explanation for life. Other than its perpetuation.
And all life should be protected, not destroyed. He decided that if there were only one
law among all men, it should be that men should not kill each other at penalty of death.
It suddenly occurred to him that the law already existed, but had apparently allowed to
fall into disuse. Thou Shalt Not Kill. If all men followed that law, then life would be
safe, so what seemed to be the problem? Why were they always killing each other?
Men killed because they were unhappy, they wanted something, and if they could
not get it, they were unhappy. They would kill to get that which would make them
happy. But if you thought about it, what made them happy for awhile, eventually made
them unhappy, because someone else somewhere would create or find something else
that would make them happier, and if they could not get it, they would become
unhappy again.
So the secret of happiness was to not want things that made you happy in the
short term, but unhappy in the long run. But was not that the promise of the Christian
paradise, the long run being Heaven? But that did not stop the princes of the church
from living a regal life. Instead of not wanting things, they all wanted something,
unless you were a Buddhist.
So apparently the entire world was on the wrong path. Everyone was killing
because they all wanted more of what they had or did not have and were not averse to
killing others to get or sustain it. They didnt want others depriving them of it, which
to Casss way of thinking, was neither Christian or charitable, nor did it have anything
to do with reverence for life, living, or the pursuit of happiness. Apparently that which
made people happy, was in direct opposition to what was good for their spiritual life.

He began to suspect that he had only imagined killing, despite the fact that the
memory was strong. He began to suspect that wars were not being fought in real
places, but staged in some cerebral setting that did not actually occur in time and space,
but on some desert or jungle in some out of the way place in the universe that did not
truly matter in so far as human life and death issues were concerned, someplace like
TV land. People could be fed the kind of information that placed great emphasis on
their personal needs, while demeaning the needs of the despicable and unworthy
enemies of the state.

It was as if people took time out from their busy lives of living and being pious
and god-loving to watch their country massacre a so-called enemy, who could at one
time or another, have once been a confident or convenient friend. Times change and
we must all change with them, he thought. Though he could not now conceive of
taking a life, it was something he was not able to understand about his past.
Once upon a time, he had embraced anger. It had provided him with solutions to
immediate problems, but he never killed in anger, only fear. He killed because he
feared being killed. And when his life was not in danger, he loved. He loved the
women who would have loved to kill him, but he did not love the men.

91
 God-fearing men kill the things they fear; men who love God love themselves and
all others. A man who loves God knows God lives in every man, and what men do to
each other, they do also to their God.
Kill. The word was like a familiar friend who visited too often. Kill. The sound
did not arouse revulsion or contempt, nor was it a sound he carelessly took to heart.
Kill. It sat easy on his tongue, but it was not a word that gave him pleasure to repeat.
In the bathroom sitting on the pot, he whispered the word under his breath. Kill.
Ill. Ilk. Llik. He whispered the word in the mirror, lip-to-lip. The mirror clouded. Kill.
It was an effective word; a word that parted his lips and made him smile, a little like
cheese. The word made his stomach laugh, but it also tranquilized. It made him feel
somewhat weary and resolved all doubts that seemed to dangle in his mind annoyingly.
It drove apprehension into the shadows. It was truly a decisive word weighed down
with implications. Could there be any questions? It pointed in a single direction, a
single compelling attainment. It was a boundlessly pleasing and satisfying sentiment.
It took so little effort to say or do. It was quite conclusive.

Cleo sat at his side pressing her bulbous breasts against his arm, snaking her legs
around his, crawling inside of him, inhibiting his pores, his nostrils, getting under his
fingernails and into his navel. There was new knowledge, new justification in his eyes
and he did not feel it necessary to explain.
He had almost resolved his doubts when he felt the heat from her body against his
flesh. He remembered the cold rubbery flesh of death lying in a congealed pool of
frozen silence with a knife shoved to the hilt in a corpse turning rapidly into a concrete
post.
He held her hand, played with the rings on her fingers, and felt a carnival of
sensations trip from his mind. When he tried to speak or explain his feelings, his lips
and tongue were like carking goldfish lying in the mud of a dismal Sunday afternoon.
Im writing a poem, he said.
Yes, I know, She said.
You dont know, He said. Its a poem about death.
Is somebody going to die? She asked.
He placed his hands upon his knees and sat up straight and rigid.
Yes, I think so. Im glad you brought that up. Its been about that all along, I just
couldnt see it.
You mean, in the poem, she said. Not for real. Someone is going to die in the
poem, right?
Cass looked confused. I dont know. Its hard to tell where and when it stops. I
mean, the poem, its hard to tell where its going. It takes on a life of its own, and
itsteals from me. I mean, here we sit talking about my poem, but all the while, my
mind is not on the poem, but on you, who you are and what you are doing.
She shook the confusion from her thoughts. Well, who am I, and what am I
doing?
I dont know why you are, but I know who you arent You arent any of the
women I thought you were. First, I thought you were a muse, and then a siren, and
then a harpy, and lately Ive been thinking you are Penelope, so patient and loving.I

92
dont know why you are, but I suspect it has something to do with me. Every time I
turn around, you are there, filling in all the empty spaces in my life.
She was string at her hands, at the calloused mound of Jupiter, and the
innumerable children lines running from the fat fate line in the palm of her hand.
Youre a mother, Madonna, and a whore, and together weve created life,
something living, found and soft as a melon flesh of a melon.
Is that all? She asked.
He had not anticipated a question, only derisive laughter. When she did not laugh
and would not acknowledge his contribution, he could not find the words to make her
understand the uncertainty he felt.
Married, is that what we are? He asked.
She smiled helplessly. The word contained some form of panacea for his dilemma.
She put her hand in his. Lets say we are. Ive never called any man husband
before. When you want to quit, just kick out my teeth and bury them under a rock, and
Ill let you go.
Cass could not believe that she loved him. He of the pale cheek, son of adultery
and divorce, cavities and deceit, but her eyes did not lie.. She would want him after
despair and anger plucked out his eyes and drank the blood that flowed from the
sockets.
Husband? he repeated the words silently to himself: Husband, Marriage, Horse
and Carriage, Coinage, Carnage, and Disparage. It was not a fitting epitaph.
She stood before him and removed her robe. It fell to the floor like a feather.
Listlessly and without effort, she kneeled on the floor and removed his socks. He
waited while she fumbled with the buttons on his slacks.

Canto

The odor of failure was all over Cass. He hated Cleo for allowing him to discover
that he could not write his dream without shedding fresh blood or tears. But in order to
justify his existence, he continued to write, to pound the keyboard of the rapidly aging
typewriter. To Cleo, the clatter of the keys was more inspiring then the pulsations of
her own heart.
Each day resulted in several new pages of madness and excrescence. Sickened by
his own composition, more so than if he had been forced to devour his own crap, he
forced it out, hating every second, loathing every page he produced.
The machine mocked him for abandoning his dreams. He continued to pound,
stealing from public domain essays, looking at pictures in Playboy for inspiration and
cursing himself for not having the strength of purpose and conviction to quit before his
self-loathing soiled the sheets of paper.
He pounded. He prayed for an atomic war and an accompanying blast that would
end his misery. He prayed that God would strike him dead for his blasphemy. He
prayed that the earth would crack open and devour him, but he knew that it would
undoubtedly spew him forth in spasms of regurgitation. He was a good anti-dote for
moral poisoning. He believed that he could sicken the world back to health. He felt
like a leper, a human revulsion turned inside out.

93
 His suffering was total. He felt as unwholesome as a plague-ridden rat. He
projected his disease into the unconscious of others. The women he tried to pick up on
streets were repulsed. It was as if all the evil of society had chosen to infest him. He
was the carrier of a new and dreaded disease, the disease of self-loathing. He could
find no one to blame but himself. He was not important to the order of things. He was
the one who had demanded proof of his existence. He was the one who had maimed
him self, took one look in the mirror and fainted from fright. He was the one who
provided a safe harbor for insanity.
He continued to abuse the typewriter somehow remaining always hopeful that
from among the trash a single flower might someday bloom. It meant nothing to him
that thousands were fathering universes, that children were being incubated in the
warm bellies of youthful maidens, that princes were saddling their princesses and
shooting stars and comets into their vaginal tracts. Cass was too busy lusting after his
own chastity.

Canto

He wanted to stick it into his brain and give birth to a new idea. He believed that
if he had half the mind hed started with, he would have destroyed the model 17 and
spent his evenings launching spermatazoa into primordial seas. He would have
consigned those empty dreams of immortality to the flames and resigned himself to
being a good father to Cleos children, instead of an insensitive ogre who screamed
mercilessly at a four-year-old child. If only he had half that mind left., but now it was
gone. It had been picked clean and spread paper thin with blue-black ink. It was now
the substance of crystallized idiocy. It had given to the purity of paper a poisonous
taint that had condemned the paper to condescension, insults, mockery and hate. It had
turned an impartial sheet of paper into a malodorous injunction that would somehow
enlist the hatred of mankind. It had formed with a bizarre arrangement of words the
formula to ignite the tempers of principled men. It had succeeded in stopping
conscientious women from spreading their legs to honorable men. It had by all means
become something loathsome and tainted by the substance of his mind, and his two
hours of typing were up.

Canto

The silence was heavy. The buzzing sound of a single fly filled the air. It was
almost possible to hear miniscule particles of dust-- of atomic activity colliding in
the air. It was an enervating silence. The sleeping world had left the night awake for
Cass to waste. The time of day so preciously doled out between coffee breaks and taxi
meters had vanished and the free night lay like a blanket on the earth. It did not
impose a tax or cover charge or two-drink minimum. It came like a woman in a dark
veil and gave freely of itself. It came and spread itself at his feet and invited him to
partake generously and freely of that which most men could least afford. He sat
quietly and gazed into the night. It was dark and splendid and deathly quiet. He could
not embrace it for its girth was too great. He sat and gazed at the night.

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 Canto

In the morning, he was determined to venture inside, to discover something about

himself and the work of creation he had chosen to perform. He would deprive himself
of food, drink and television for the entire weekend.
A sheet of blank paper was threaded into the typewriters reel. A dictionary was
stationed close at hand, while a brand new gum eraser, ballpoint pens, and a new legal
pad with pages white as the belly of an old nun waited. All that was required was the
presence of mind equal to the task.
He paced anxiously for a few seconds enjoying the last few sips of coffee. He
sucked devoutly on a cigarette and watched with reverence as the smoldering ashes of
his imagination took flame. In seconds the embers had grown into a torrent of words
that leaped like sparks toward some unseen, unknown hierarchy of genius. He plunged
into the work and smashed with the tips of his fingers the ancient metal keyboard.. The
keys clattered like a Baretta machine gun. As quickly as words sprang to mind they
were splattered across the paper.
He wrote rapidly to keep the demon from disappearing behind the veil. For 20
minutes he wrote like a man possessed. The world had come together in a spiritual
symbiosis. Double-spaced page after double-paced page fell beneath the sharp and
deadly blows delivered from his fingertips. Then suddenly, as he approached an
intellectual climax that would have carried him into the realm of the profanely inspired,
he paused. His eyes narrowed and searched his thoughts for the illusive phrase that
would have launched him into that ethereal realm. But all he could see was Cleos face
watching him from the doorway.
The vision began to crumble. He began to fall from the backs of those words
those winged steeds that had carried him heavenward. His vocabulary again became
one with mankind. His dry tongue moistened itself against the roof of his mouth, and
he frowned.
She hovered in the doorway, a wraith with no conscious agenda, before entering
the apartment. The room was full of household flack. She slammed the door and
kicked a pile of newspapers and soiled clothes across the floor. Threading her way
through discarded articles of clothes, laundry, sacks of garbage, toys and old papers,
she stopped behind him, legs spread and two fists balanced defiantly on her hips. He
covered the ink-smeared paper with his shadow knowing her eyesight would not
permit her to read in its darkness.
She turned and stomped into the kitchen, knocked a half-dozen soiled plastic cups
into the sink and paused on her mission to water a withered and dying plant.
Two minutes later her three children exploded in the hall and hit the door. The
wood near the hinge splintered. The bottom of the door bounced beneath their steady
barrage of drop kicks. The sound reverberated through the building. Kass let them in.
They blew past him like wild scampering animals without a word and went straight for
their rooms, where the bulk of their toys, gifts from Cleos admirers, were piled
shoulder deep.
In his absence, Cleo scanned the page in the typewriter. She held her head erect to
keep her runny nose from dripping. She was always the first to catch cold, and then
she passed it around as if were a family heirloom, or a painting of her great

95
grandfather. She read the single page and then tottered off to the bathroom in her
spiked heels. She slammed the door and ran the tap while she peed. She powdered and
pampered and played with herself for a few minutes and then re-emerged.
Her chin was extended defiantly resisting Casss compromising demeanor. She
scanned the bookshelf to see if he had destroyed, removed or mutilated her Household
Encyclopedia of Cooking, Sewing and Knitting. It was still there, right between his
two-volume copy of Madame Blavatskys Isis Unveiled. It made her angry that she
had nothing to get angry about.

She turned over a chair, ransacked a closet, emptied a clothes hamper in the
bathroom, and tore down a shower curtain.
Looking for something? he asked, with a lack of genuine concern
She did not reply. She scattered laundry, dumped a shelf of books upon the floor,
unpacked a dresser drawer, removed pillows from the couch and emptied a sack of
garbage on the floor before stopping for breath.
Have you seen my bathing suit?
He looked curiously at her tormented eyes and then at the great belly that floated
like a hot air balloon in front of her.
Its a maternity bathing suit, I bought it two months ago.
He told her it was probably right where she left it two weeks ago after her swim at
the YWCA. She waited for him to finish. He could see the impatience taking over her
eyes.
In the milk box just outside the door.
She cursed him beneath her breath and warned him, If it has mildewed, you will
have to buy me a new one.
He nodded in agreement. She shook out the towel and the bathing suit and gave
Cass a verbal list of instructions to follow while she was out. She rewrapped the towel
and suit and started out the door.
Where you going? he asked.
Swimming, with Clarence, and then to dinner, and maybe dancing at a club, a
private club. She said she would call if their plans changed. One more thing, she
said, standing at the open door. I dont want any of you friends, male or female, to
enter this apartment while Im out. And then she was gone

Canto

In the bedroom, a battle was already in full swing. Cass could hear pilot Zane
showering Red Guard Commander Dana with armor penetrating missiles, while Nurse
Ea screamed for more bandages and bloody patients.

Cass thought about Clarence. He was a middle-aged attorney whose father owned
and operated the Lute & Lyre; it was also rumored that he owned a few restaurants of
his own. Clarence often referred to himself as a ladies man, which Cass interpreted
to mean that he curried favor with women, or sought their approval. Why any man felt
he needed the approval of women was beyond Casss ability to comprehend. Why
should a man seek the approval of women? Was it because they wanted something

96
from them, other than sex? He suspected that men who sought the approval of women
must suffer from some kind of psycho-sexual-social disease. A man does not seek the
approval of an ugly or an old woman, nor would he seek the approval of a woman who
smelled bad; but if she were young and beautiful, men would give away their fortunes
to possess her, which made Cass wonder what was missing in most mens lives that
they would surrender so completely to the whim and fancy of their libidos.
Or did it go even deeper into their squirming psyches, into those areas better left
untouched. Into those dark labyrinthine areas where food and sex intermingled and
entwined and what looked good must necessarily taste good, and to possess something
completely is to devour it, become one with it, in much the same way the church
encouraged mankind to eat of the body and blood of Christ/God, if one would be one
with the gods.

Clarence was also a scavenger, or what Cass viewed as a bottom feeder. His sex
life depended on other peoples misery and divorce. Cleo talked about him as if he
were the high priest of a secret sex cult. She however denied sleeping with him, as did
most women after they realized their men were corpse eaters, or more oral and
concerned with food than sex. Clarence glutted his libido on the remains or leftovers
of failed marriages.
Clarence however could discuss most eloquently the physiology of any woman
hed ever encountered with an astounding eye for detail. He was the kind of man
women liked to do forbidden things with, but which no male ever objected to, or
envied Clarence his misfortune.
Whenever the proverbial house husband tired of attending to his mates or
girlfriends salubrious sexual fantasies, Clarence would magically appear as if he were
mystically wired into the dysfunctions of modern society. No one knew much about
Clarence except his first name, and the fact that he seemed to possess large quantities
of cash.
Clarence was always a welcome sight and a respite for the family man
bludgeoned by the myriad social dysfunctions that hung round his village door.
Women however did not fall in love with Clarence; they enjoyed his company. How
could you love something designed by social custom to service ones excretory
functions. In fact, after bleeding him of his seemingly bottomless pit of compassion,
they despised him, though valuing his services. Cass suspected they tired too easily of
his demands. Then he would disappear into an underground that somehow
mysteriously sustained him.

He would apparently lay in waiting for a few weeks and than another woman
would begin to feel insatiate, and quite miraculously, he would appear. The husband
or lover would welcome him into his home, shake his hand and look forward to a few
evenings alone, while his wife went out and blew her snot in Clarences silk hankies.
Clarence would bring them home trembling with delight and exhaustion and then
he would vanish like a hologram. He was a man who mistook sex for affection,
passion for compassion, and hunger for love. He was as compassionate as a dildo and
though he thought he had a purpose in life, he couldnt put it into words. To be jealous
of Clarence was to be jealous of a disease.

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 Canto

The war raged on. A tank exploded and a battalion of men burst into flame. A
heroic pilot cursed as his plastic Nieuport exploded and his parachute failed to open,
while he descended slowly into a firey death, aircraft fire tore off both his legs.
Cass contemplated entering the room under the guise of an off-shore naval battery
but the risk was too great. The last time a well-aimed torpedo hit him square in the
magazine and nearly left him without genitals.

Canto

He returned to the typewriter, but the flames had died and the ashes were cold. He
unreeled the sheet of paper and placed it in the upside down pile. He did not have the
heart to try and read it before trying once more to reach new literary heights.

He sat for an hour with his fingertips at the ready in front of his Remington Model
17. The descending suns fading rays sliced through the blinds and the half-drawn
curtains and fell in soft still patterns across the room. The kids tumbled into beds of
their own making for a nap and a stillness filled the room.
Particles of dust swam in the motionless light like a flock of mini-migrating birds.
Colors were subdued. His perception of all things seemed to blur. He stared at the
couch with the chewed ragged hole and the black spring that refused to remain in
place. The scarlet weave of a thread that was hardly noticeable glistened like the belly
of a sunfish. The bumps and scars on the wooden chairs were like wounds in his body.
books seemed to offer themselves as some sort of sacrifice. They leaned forward,
nearly falling off the shelves. The titles became animated and crawled off the books
and sat on the floor. The names of the authors were not reassuring. The ragged
coverless dictionary he had bought for a quarter in a second hand bookstore crouched
in the corner like a barbaric derelict whose unfathomable tale of words and more
words challenged his deepest thoughts.

Canto

When the kids woke from their nap, Cass ordered a pizza and sodas and turned
them loose on the playground. The seats on the swings were wet from the rain, but
they still had to wait. Cass jammed his fists into his pockets and pulled his collar up
and around his neck. All the young and fashionable mothers were wearing stretch
pants and sweaters.
The rainwater soaked the worn-out soles of his shoes, soaked his stockings and
then leaked out again through the holes in the bottom. Cass could feel his socks sliding
down around his ankles and disappearing into his shoes.
He pushed Damon on a swing while Dorian amused a little girl behind a tree with
a sparkling stream of urine that burned a steaming hole in her memory. The childs
mother scolded him and dragged her baby by the hair back onto the swings.

98
 At the farthest extremity of the swings glide, Damon decided to get off. He did
not fall directly to earth, but soared a few feet into the air; a pile of brush and debris
broke his fall. Cass picked him up, brushed him off and he was back in the race. Cass
envied his resilience; he would have lain there until the snows came again and buried
him completely.

Within minutes, the sun had vanished. And the cool night air settled down around
the open places in the village. Everyone disappeared into their well-lighted, well-
heated apartments. Dorian and Damons noses were running with slimy secretions.
Cass lured them home with promises of monster stories and they followed amiably.

Canto

When they entered the apartment, Tom, a stray cat Cleo had adopted, was
discretely sandwiching a pile of shit between old newspapers. The cat had class. He
didnt need a sand or litter box, and he had enough sense not to use a magazine or
newspaper that hadnt been read. He always put it someplace that made them proud of
him. Once, after returning from a weeks absence -- and the cat had been locked in the
apartment Cleo finally got around to cleaning under the sink. She found an empty
gallon paint can filled to the brim with cat shit, She said that if the top hadnt been
stuck to the floor, the cat would have sealed it himself and dragged it out with the
garbage.

After a slice of cold pizza and a glass of warm milk, Cass read them to sleep with
stories from Homer. When they finally conked out, he did not envy them their dreams.
Only a child could survive such delightful horrors.

Tom, the cat, jumped up on the table and sniffed Casss coffee cup. The bitter
fluid did not appeal to him. He curled up between a stack of hand-written notes and a
batch of poems, and watched the creator through narrow, drugged eyes. That cat had
class.

Cass sat at the typewriter and drowsed, then moved to the couch and drowsed
some more. He fell asleep while recounting the days occurrences, sifting as it were,
the ashes of the day for a gem to encase in his diadem of literature, but there were
none to be found.

A half hour before the rosy-fingered child of dawn crept across the sky, the kids
were out of bed rehearsing war games. Before breakfast the entire Japanese fleet, 30
kami-kazis, a dozen U-boats, three Russian MiGs and at least a dozen Chinese dragons
had been destroyed. By noon, Tokyo, Moscow, Hong Kong, Berlin, London, Sidney,
and Cincinnati were reduced to rubble.
A few minutes before Cleo returned, the few surviving members of the human
race were on their way to a distant star, courtesy of a man from outer space. It had
been a desperate morning, but by clinging to all he had suspected to be true of

99
Children, Cass had survived. The walls of the bedroom were red with the blood of all
nations, or finger paints, but he had survived the battle.

The last few days had not been restful. They were exhausting days full of perfidy
that left unanswered questions dangling in the breeze. They were the kind of days that
started out bad and didnt get better. Days were full of whispering back-biting winds,
plots and schemes and furtive glances at the legs of underage girls in the library.
Uninspiring, lethargic, dull an unimaginative days. The highly skilled professional
men advanced themselves by apparent degrees and the unemployed, unskilled
struggled through another dreadful day that brought them one step closer to utter
dejection , schizophrenia and murder.

Canto

Even time appeared to be bending over backwards to appease those savage

instincts that had become so apparent in his character.

He slept peacefully and awaited the ill-fated star that would lift his flawless poets
body through the clouds and deposit it in some Elysian field to feed on the music of
the stars. It was a glorious and wasteful experience that he never had a chance to live.

It had been a long and lonesome siege. He held out against the seasons and the
elements. His hunger had taken him through too many dreams and garbage cans and
into the lives of strange and hungry songs and singers.
For all his effort, he discovered only that there were no standards, no applicable
wisdom, no key to the knowledge of the secret of contentment or human bliss, only
cannibal bliss
The wisdoms were as numerous as sands within the seas, stars within the skies,
hairs upon the head. A mans knowledge of pitch or peat moss, root beer or rutabagas
was equivalent to the knowledge one gleans from philosophies, sciences and arts.
The wisdom of removing pain from nettled hearts however far surpassed the
wisdom of a mighty ruler whose powers were based on wealth and weapons, or on the
misinterpretation of human needs, or religious dogma.

The stench of poverty is doom it cannot be mistaken. It rots the fiber of the
clothes, breaks down cell structure and promote cancerous blight

God, let me do a mans work and die in peace. Help me to forget the dreams and
wild ambitions that made me old and sorry and full of regret before my time. Help me
know respect and friends whose valued presence is a luxury. Help me to keep a family
far from hunger and pain, knowing health and happiness. Keep me from living in and
out of debt, cursing bills and final statements, waiting for the tide to turn, waiting for a
taste of carefree living.

100
 Canto

She never lied or said she loved him. She tried instead to be aloof, removed, and
equi-distant from all logic and false reason, but nothing worked. She watched him
come and go, and took him in her arms like some wayward child. She blessed him
with a shower of kisses, warm and wet. He let her spend her love like pollen in the air
to fall and fecundate to no avail. He spent a lonely hour in her arms each time she
grew to hungry for solitude, but that was all.
There was no spring of happiness for her love. She wore him down; he wasted her.
Time crawled away from both of them with ugliness and hate and nothing bloomed.
The child within her womb grew round and sleek and dreamed in silence of the
marvelous passing soon to be undertaken, a memorable voyage. She stroked the taut
distension, tickled its fancy and forced the harlots fleeting grin of joy.

Canto

Tiresome and tedious gaps of dull gray days lay motionless beneath a babbling
hash of wailing sirens. Laughter, tears and cosmic dust careened through the dank tank
streets, while mottled dreams and sewer gas, a jumbled scheme of taxicabs, and
painted neon abstractions formed blisters on the street.
flesh flowers in a concrete garden, with plastic eyes and heads of cabbage green
stuffed with pillow feathers, smoldered in the shadows. Soundless in the crypt of
thought and rebirth, steeped in the soot and dust of generations, slumbering, mumbling
Incantations to stave off new wounds that open with every empty dawn.

Canto

Galea soaked in hot rum-scented waters flavored with bay leaves and oils, pearls
and pain. She dressed and undressed again and again in a manner befitting her moods.
She was dreaming of love and hungry for his touch. She tied flowers and ribbons, and
bright colored yarn in her hair. A cluster of oak leaves, a short skirt, a blouse, white
gloves and a defenseless grin set with innumerable cares and sanitary white teeth were
her disguise and wardrobe for the night.
Thin gentle breezes crept through the curtains and into her room to pilfer the
odors and carry them down into the street. She breathed a sigh of praise for her flesh.
It gathered speed and altitude and disappeared without a whisper into the dark ocean
emptiness.
She sent the dogs out of her room and locked them up in the kitchen. Then
telephoned Cass at the Lute and Lyre; he was quick to respond.

He met her precisely at midnight; she looked whore hungry and full of gin by the
time he arrived. He kissed her fingertips and held her hands. She pressed his forearm
to her breast and waltzed him to an over-upholstered chair. When he finally stopped
sinking into the cushions, there was nothing left to charm but belly and balls.
He stood and paced in front of the bookcase, an old monstrosity that covered an
entire wall. Amid the innumerable glass and metal boxes that comprised her private

101
collection, a few ragged edges of untouched antique volumes could be found. A
random sampling of cheap paperbacks, indiscriminately scattered about on the shelves,
competed for space with a glass cigarette box bearing hand-painted peacocks, gold
boxes, silver boxes, and boxes of every size and shape and composition were scattered
here and there. Empty containers that were her delight, like the empty womb that was
her bane.
Her apartment, baroque as an immortal poem, remained eternally the same, each
room basking in its own unique design, and each room a transitory monument on the
primrose path to the temple of the Goddess of False Pregnancy and Fidelity. Kass said
he loved her artifacts nearly as much as the pope claimed to love jokes about celibacy.

He wrote her into every symbolic dream he had. She smiled and pawed the air
that swirled above him with her boned and brittle fingers. He told her lies. He said
from now on he would be her errand boy, sweep the dog crap from her front steps and
carry her garbage out to the can, gargle her gin and drink from her waterbed.
He reminded her of the long night of prolonged copulation when she had sworn a
sacred oath to him that he had been the first, that he had been the one to deflower
her, to harvest her ripe fruit. And he had believed her, to a degree; though his mind
was full of doubt, his heart believed in 40-year-old virgins. His tongue waltzed with a
secret argot, and he twittered whenever he talked.
Her presence was an anodyne. She vanished in his arms and purred and made soft
melting sounds that tapped his nervous system and made his knees buckle whenever
she was near. He could not keep his two feet on the ground. His stomach would
tremble and growl and climb up to his throat. His head would get stuffy, his nose
would run, and his feet would forget how to walk.

He cursed her the night she drew circles and squares in the sex-oppressed air. She
turned on her side and said that shed lied and that she really wasnt a virgin. He tried
to discover what her other lovers had taught her to hide. She talked about motels and
hotels and parties, strangers and strange things shed done to get started. He listened
and laughed at the carved ivory idol he bore secretly in his heart. It shattered and
crumpled like plaster. She kissed his tears and scratched her nose and told him not to
take it so personally.
They parted friends again that night but a hundred safeguards barred her door.
She made him promise lycanthropy the next time they undressed. He wiped away a
toothy grin and swore hed be a demon. But she had never asked him back again, until
tonight.

She held out both her hands to be kissed again. He parted them and kissed her
cold damp palms. She grinned a serpents grin and snaked her tongue around her lips.
He took her in his arms, her mouth opened and he nearly disappeared. Her soft
compliant spirit wrapped him in a wardrobe of tantalizing flesh. An imponderable
intimacy possessed him. He longed to be inside her, to sit in her overstuffed chair and
watch her pour tea. He ached to press his lips against those beautiful bosoms that came
into bloom at the touch of a tongue. He wanted to document with his fingertips the

102
supple curves of her body, as if she were a road atlas, and he was a titan holding the
world on hi shoulders.
She was like an oasis in a party dress. He could not have a thought or desire that
she did not perceive. There was not a bone or muscle, not a single movement of her
body that was not compatible with some particular organ of his. When his eyes met
hers, he experienced an emission. She confided to him that her breasts would also
become erect and often lactate, and that she too experienced the pure pleasure of
stimulation and an emission abou as subtle as a sperm whale.

The delicate art of touch flourished. The simple pleasure of her fingertips pressed
against his hip, and his bowels would move. Her body was shaken with such great
tremors that only a cold shower could cause them to abate. She was pleasing and fluid,
as if her previous identity had been negated by her desire for pleasure.
She was like a sweet flower with tasteless fruit that bloomed once in a while, but
not often. A flower, dark and forbidding, like the womb of a Nigerian princess, filled
with a syrup that could awaken the dead with a single drop. One drop on the lips of a
believer and he could see as far into the future as his myopic vision would permit. He
would be able to speak in all known and unknown tongues, and the elements would
whisper their secrets to his long-entrusted care. It is a formidable elixir. When lapped
in large quantities, it has been known to give wings to Nigerian princes and household
pets.

Canto

His poem was dead. It died one night beneath the bed. A paper cup of coffee
spilled on the floor, and the loose pages of the poem drank it up too quickly. His poem
was dead, but he did not care. The work weighed heavily on his mind and played
tricks on his brain. Now, he could light a fire at night in the evening and bathe in its
warmth rather than wait for inspiration to kindle a flame. His hands were cold and
numb and all his prized prose-sessions had wandered away. He could not write a poem,
or sentence or a word without spilling a little blood and someone elses tears.

He knew that he was her greatest source of pleasure. He knew his deliberate
probing and studious examinations inspired her. He knew that he acted like an opiate
upon her circulatory system. Only after hours of prolonged indiscretions and the final
high note of their activity achieved, and the inundating wave of recuperation flowed
over them, would she confide in him her bitter sweet memories. While her body
throbbed to the beat of a different drum, she gazed at the ceiling through half-closed
eyelids. She talked of her great lovers while his fingers explored her intestinal tract.

George and I have a beautiful relationship, She explained. But he always uses
condoms. I wont permit him to enter without a condom. You are the only one. You
have such a beautiful organ. George, the poor dear, is always thinking about me, never
about himself. It is only my pleasure that concerns him. You have such a beautiful
maypole. It is the finest piece I have ever taken into my body. It is such a pleasure to
hold in my mouth. I love the feel of it battering the wall of my womb and driving

103
almost into my stomach. I know I will be sore and unable to walk tomorrow. I will
have to lie in bed and savor each delicious ache and pray all the while that you will
hurry back to me. You will come back to me, wont you? I dont think I will be able to
live without that ruthless piece of Polish sausage plowing through my forest primeval.
Now tell me, do you love me? Do you worship me? Do you love my sweet pot of
honey meade? Are not my sweet and delicate emissions as of the nectar of the gods? Is
it not a jam for the bread of love? Oh, my darling, strike deeply, strike deep and
impale me upon thy lovely shaft. Let thy cannon explode and my empty womb will
devour thy seeds and a child of our glorious union will be conceived. Oh, my dearest,
awaken in my body the soul of a child. Give me your germ of love, give me a baby to
nourish and feed inside, and my body will grow beyond comprehension. It will
struggle free, splitting me wide open and leaving me big enough to admit you
completely.
Give me your seed; start a fire in my belly burning and quench it with your
tongue.

Canto

A chilling breeze from the window roused him from his thoughtless lethargy. She
sighed and rolled over in bed. She wore no nightclothes and her pendulous white
breasts protruded from under the sheet. Her lips were parted and she sipped little gulps
of air as she slept. Cass was pleased with himself, but the darkness and silence kept
him awake and alert. He waited impatiently for the dawn. His thoughts tripped toward
the bloated moon and, like falling leaves in Autumn, soon returned to settle gently on
the earth once more.

In the morning, they shared the same shower. For twenty minutes she sat at the
dressing table creating with colors and creams a face to assault the world. The
presence of her nakedness, her shoulders, neck and spine, her breasts, navel, firm
round tummy, and the barely discernable shadow between her thighs forced him to
spread her legs once more and go meandering through her bush. This time, he laid her
on the carpet. He held her buttocks in the palms of his hands and the thrusting driving
momentum of his endeavor drove her into a far distant corner of the room. The next
time, he promised, he would hold her against the wall and strike with such ferocity
that they would both skim across the ceiling like fornicating flies.

She fried eggs while Cass read Cyrano de Bergerac. He thought there was
something phallic in her need to have him read the play.
What does the de-frocked Jesuit read to you? he asked.
She plucked a grapefruit from the humidor of the refrigerator and poised it beside
her breasts as if to suggest a comparison. It was an uncalled for provocation. Her 40-
year-old paps dwarfed the fruit. She narrowed her eyes, smiled and her mouth and
tongue became super-suggestive of her vulva and clit. Casss staff buoyed the robe he
was wearing like a circus tent. She appraised his erection, snarled at it and then
sandwiched it within the deep crevasse of her rump.

104
 He reads philosophies: Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Spinoza, Santayana and Sartre.
Weve even read the Philosophy of Art together.
Casss discriminating dirk declined the proffered bottom and ashamedly withdrew.
She moved wordlessly to the table and sliced the fruit. Something about all of those
philosophers and the philosophy of Art in one breath did it. It was a bit nauseating, but
the mention of a name like Nietzsche or Hegel always succeeded in rendering him
materially impotent. She flipped the knife around carelessly, all the while examining
the smooth surface of his robe.
You neednt fear their names, she said. They are far less dangerous than you.
She held the knife like a commando and crept forward. She grabbed him by the
handle and placed the blade of the knife at its base.
I want it for breakfast; she said. Prick and eggs for breakfast.
Too late, he said. Its returned to the place where it goes when I dont know
what to make of the situation.
She sat on the edge of the table, leaned backward on both hands and spread her
legs, revealing yet another hungry maw waiting to be appeased. She threw her legs
over his shoulders and directed him homeward.
sow and ye shall reap, She advised.
His missile moved toward the target. No laser guidance system could have been
more technically precise.
It was a little sluggish getting started; she was as dry as a desiccated bone. Under
normal circumstances, she was like a beaver dam that contained countless tons of
body liquids, including frangipani juice. Like her oral counterpart, it worked up a
slithery bath, and by using the muscles in her vagina like a serpent, via lateral
undulation, she managed to get it in, inch-by-inch, until it touched down on the womb.
She then began to cavort like a gymnast, arching her back and straining in every
imaginable position seeking a way to get more out of something that wasnt there. It
climbed up and down inside her and slammed like the end of a medieval battering ram
at the main gate of her womb. She whimpered and clenched her teeth and almost slid
off the table.
I can feel the clouds gathering she said, Youre going to get caught in a
shower.
Her legs started tightening around and over his shoulders and walking down his
back. Only her head was touching the table, a veritable gyroscope for the rest of her
body. She strained forward to get as much of it inside as she could imagine. The water
continued to back up and Cass was in a good position to deliver his payload. He
wanted to make a professional statement, so he rammed it in decisively. Her head was
bouncing on the table like a rubber ball. He lifted her up and off and onto his tool and
drove it squarely home, a round peg in an equally round lacuna. She groaned and
murmured something incoherent about shitting her pants and he exploded like a sperm
whale, with a closed cavity in his roughly square head.
He was too weak to sustain her weight, so he let her slide to the floor and fell on
his knees. He crawled into a chair and drank a glass of pulpy OJ. He stared at the eggs
sitting on the plate, and they stared back. He took his limp impaler and dabbed it in the
yolk. The yolk broke like a withered maidenhead. He worked his tool around in the
runny yellow stuff until his bread stick was thoroughly covered, then he sandwiched it

105
comfortably between the two plump cheeks of her bum, which were irradiating
warmth and an irksome, not too pleasing, fragrance.

Canto

Cass spent the morning in a bookstore located directly across the street from an
art theater. The city was still trying to clean up after the rain. The gutters were
flowing with trash and the sidewalks were littered with cigarette butts, blood and
nicotine stained phlegm, and an assortment of discarded human accoutrements that
defied description. The street looked as if the jolly green giant had taken sick and
spewed out the chafe of a weeks gluttony.
Cass picked his way carefully down the cracked and crumbling sidewalk while
carefully avoiding contact with a pair of abandoned old shoes, a battered hat, a shit
stained letter, the balls of an orangutan, a Chinese mans liver, a six pack of Jewish
foreskins, a nylon stocking probably used to strangle some clap-encrusted tart, a
condom, a half-empty bottle of wine and urine, a sport jacket complete with bloody
knife slashes, a blood-stained newspaper, a mans arm, a soggy fortune cookie, and
three hundred thousand tons of vomit.
The night before, an army of perverts shoveled it into there mouths at ten dollars a
plate, not to mention the $3.50 for drinks that strangled it out of them a few hours later.
A wise man would have shoveled it out of the gutters, bottled it and sold it back to the
same madmen who put it there, and for a handsome profit. It was all he could do to
keep from falling down in the street and choking to death on the stench.

He staggered to the restroom and tried to make himself wretch by sticking his
finger down his throat and scratching his balls at the same time. He gagged a few
times, but nothing came up; his system was just not letting go these days of anything it
acquired. When he came out, the security guard fish-eyed him. Cass winked like a
grouper, zipped up his pants and trotted to the card index.
He pulled the only four books ever written about the Quechuan Indians from the
shelf and tried to memorize a few lines of poetry. The words sounded like thunder in
the native tongue, but interpreted, they said:

From your scrotum, I will make a drum,

From your schmuck a flute,
And from your balls, I will make
a chain of love beads.

Cass wasnt making much progress with his studies. He felt too full of himself,
lithe and supple. Fornicating all night and half the next day had lent a measure of
substance to his being. He felt as if he could dance his way through Dantes Inferno,
or just start burning books and pulling on the white beards of all the old literary lamas
who digested the worlds words and content and then chucked it back up to suit their
preferences.
The bookstore was also oppressive. It was not the weight of gravity or
accumulated knowledge that oppressed him, but the weight of bulk and waste, of petty

106
thievery and the density of the concrete abutment that one was required to bash ones
head against in order to be heard, read, or recited.
He flirted with a black clerk and she flirted back. He trembled and got so excited
he nearly tore a page out of a book. He ran overflowing with joy into the street to
celebrate what he conceived as meaningful eye contact.

The stench swarmed up and out of the gutters and knocked him back on his heels.
The blood ran from his face and started his stomach skipping rope. He looked for an
empty trashcan to heave his spoil into, but they were all overflowing with sordid milk
cartons, which had been used to package things other than their intended use, debris,
newspapers, beer bottles and cans. He pulled his sweater up over his nose and walked
stoically down the street through smoldering heaps of humanitys refuse.
Cass was searching faces on the street for a child/woman to aggrandize, to feed
upon, or to add to his list of potential victims, but their faces did not interest him.
Occasionally one would walk by and he would follow for two or three blocks until she
turned into a building, or a shop, or perhaps a woodland nymph. At that point he
would consider his options and convince himself that fast food or a carbonated
beverages might be equally as satisfying. It was easier to avoid the insurmountable
problem of commitment and communication then embark upon another assignation
that could lead him somewhere hed never been before, or feared to go. There were so
many things he didnt know about, including himself. He could have as easily had a
complete melt down if he had broken silence and been rejected, or accepted. In all
likelihood, he would have gone home with her and finished up the evening by staking
her naked body over a mound of fire ants.

Canto

Im going to write a play about her, he said, holding the puppet tightly within
his grasp. And when I pull the strings and put the words I want to hear in her mouth,
she will know how much I need and want her; she will also know how effete and
fruitless your affections are; she will glow with pride and rush to my arms after every
performance.
Cass pressed the puppets painted face to his lips and nearly devoured her in a
passionate kiss. George screamed and lunged, arms extended toward the doll; Cass
leaped to his feet and out of his reach.
Shes mine! I want her! George shouted
Cass licked the dolls face, lifted her dress and ran his tongue between her shapely
wooden legs and over the dark furry pubis.
George whined deeply aggrieved. Stop it, please, stop it!
Cass grinned and stalked George cautiously. He stopped within an arms length of
the trembling man, raised the doll before his eyes and ripped her clothes off. He then
turned her upside down and stuck his tongue like a spear between the puppets legs.
George leaped to his feet and tried to grab the doll from his hands. Cass drooled
over the wooden body, while George struggled to retrieve it. When he could not
loosen Casss grip, he grabbed an empty beer pitcher from the table and struck Cass

107
on the head. The pitcher shattered; Cass and the puppet fell to the floor. George picked
the puppet up and tenderly cradled it his hands.
My god, its only a wooden puppet, you damned fool, Peale shrieked.
George threw a fistful of dollars on the table. Shes mine; Im buying her from
you.
Shes not for sale. I created her, and I need her. Without her, I have no
performance.
George held the puppet to his cheek and stroked the length of human hair flowing
from her wooden head.
Im keeping her; hell never offend her again.
Cass was moving, but still lying on the floor. There was glass all over the floor
and his body, and a thin trickle of blood flowing from his hair. The fat puppeteer
swayed decisively.
I need her; I have no staharlot without her. Give her back. How would you feel
if you were snatched from the bosom of your creator?
George became obstinate. He backed up against the wall and examined the
puppets wooden features. She was a pint-sized replica of Galea, except for her
derriere, which had been modified to permit ease of entry for her horny puppet peers.
I dont think theological arguments should enter into this, George replied.
Peale lifted his glass of beer from the table, raised it to George and shrugged his
shoulders. He knew better than to engage a former Jesuit in a discussion on religion.
All right, you can keep her, but only for tonight. I want her back tomorrow in
time for the performance.
George pressed his cheek against the tiny puppets face. Shes too beautiful. She
doesnt belong in your carnival. She needs love and attention, someone to care for her,
to mend her clothes and put shoes on her tiny feet.
Peale leered at George. The beer numbed his lips and tripped his tongue. He
slurred when he spoke and beer spluttered from his mouth. Dont forget, I carved
those feet; I made that face and the rest of her, too. Shes mine and you cant have
her.
Georges whimpering behavior was becoming a source of annoyance to Peale.
The man was becoming more simple minded and banal with each encounter. Whatever
indiscretion had driven him from the Catholic clergy was the greatest of all the
churchs seven secret mysteries.
George withdrew to a nearby table with the puppet. Did you think I wouldnt
recognize her? The hair, the legs, feet, hands, hips, toes, lips eyes, theyre all hers, and
Im not going to let you take her from me. Were legally married and no one can
separate us.
He cradled the puppet fondly in his arms. Peale watched in disbelief.
Hes gone mad; the fool thinks the puppet is his wife, he said softly to Cass
who was no longer sprawled on the floor, but returning to his seat.
Cass drank the remaining swallow of beer from an abandoned pitcher on another
table. Well, isnt she?
Peale examined Casss eyes suspiciously. What, his wife? Dont be ridiculous.
Cass washed his mouth out with warm beer and spat it out on the floor. You said
she would do anything for you. Did she pose? Did she let you fondle her body? Did

108
she give you a piece to sharpen your memory, so that when you worked over your
little wooden blocks, you might have a keener memory to savor? Something to inspire
you to greater creativity?
Peale glared at him as if he were daft. He suddenly realized that the cruelty and
implications in Casss voice had nothing to do with George. Peale laughed out loud
and pounded the table with his fist. Cass sat in silence. Cleo brought another pitcher of
beer and sat it on the table.
George cradled the puppet tenderly in his arms. Peale stopped laughing and glared
at him. When George lifted the little wooden doll to his face and directed one of the
puppet arms and hand to caress his face, Peale leaped from the chair and lunged
toward George.
Dont do that! He screamed. Youre not fit to touch her.
Cass inserted himself between them. Leave him alone; at least let him think he
owns her.
Peale shoved him aside. Shes mine! I created her, and I shall have her.
He wrestled the puppet from Georges grasp. The former priest struggled briefly,
but quickly conceded. He possessed neither the strength of body or will to subdue the
fat man. A lifetime of sacrifice and sublimation had left him without a wisp of desire
to dominate either physically or mentally another person or event. The physical
instincts and desires he once possessed and had succeeded in mastering had created a
faultless, passive being who neither wanted nor did-not want; he was a force that
looked upon channeled activity and focused thought as meaningless, and the greatest
offense and indignity to God and man. He could no more resist than he could seek to
dominate, and the idea of a struggle for a single self-serving objective was as pointless
as seeking reward or satisfaction for a good or equally undeserving deed. If he had
struggled against Peale for control of the puppet, it would have been the greatest
blasphemy he could have committed before his God, because if God did exist,
everything was preordained. There could be no other explanation for the great
injustices that permeated the world. To attempt change was to defy Gods will. No
matter if one chose to resist or chose not to resist, the eventual outcome would be the
same. And none would be any better, wiser or worse off. The equation 2=1+1=2 was
faultless and pure, as it was in the beginning and shall be in the end.

Canto

Peale held the doll in both hands; it was back again and under his control. He
suddenly felt like an imbecile. In the not so distant past, hed owned several puppets
like her and sold them for a pittance. They were not exact duplicates but similar. His
Italian predecessor, Giuseppe, was the originator and creator of the road company and
the puppets. Peales humble contributions and amendments were their organs of
specialty, which he attached at a much later date.
When he first arrived in the city from Rhode Island, a descendant of the RI
Harringtons, Peale intended to study the art of cake decorating. After one year of
employment as an apprentice, he girt his modest frame with 100 extra pounds of
delectably flavored icing. Terrified by the prospects of another years study, he
resigned and tried to become a stand-up comic, but that too failed. No one laughed at

109
his jokes; at him, yes, but not at his jokes, which is when he met Giuseppe, the
puppeteer, who taught him the art of manipulating wood.
Hiding behind a dark curtain and pulling strings on mannequins seemed to be
more fulfilling and a prophetic occupation. Peale discovered immense pleasure and
satisfaction in the work. After the old master puppeteer died, Peale fell heir to his
possessions, which included hundreds of the finest carved wooden puppets in the
business.

Peales first innovation was to endow Godiva -- originally designed to portray

Snow White -- with a vagina and breasts that Barbie would envy. He harvested the
long silken soft hairs from the pubis of Galea. The passage to her Womb-Sweet-
Womb was different from that of any other woman. She was not motivated by greed
or selfishness; she was cruel and indifferent.
Once launched on the pornographic portrayal of the classics, Godiva became his
most popular porno star. Pinocchios lengthening nose could quickly be removed and
implanted in his pelvis, which permitted him to portray an easily aroused Prince
Charming in versions of both Snow White and Cinderella. Pencil-dick Pinocchio was
also a great success as Mephisto in his production of Faust.

She is different, Peale muttered.

Cass concurred.
We used to eat each other with pancakes and syrup by candle light, Peale said.
And then we would paint pretty pictures in the toilet bowl and flush them away, the
way Buddhists do with sand paintings in secret, sacred India.
Cass slowly removed the doll from the table and gazed into its glass eyes.
Then we would sit on the fire escape and watch the night disrobe, Peale said.
There are moments in a mans life when the beauty of a thought or deed is to intense
to be framed in words, or shared, or understood by anyone.
Cass concurred again and an original thought occurred
The things men really have to say cannot be said,
Unless their bodies are separated from their heads.

He sniffed the fury vagina of the puppet.

Fe, fi, fo fum, he said, grinning.

George whined in pathetic protest to Casss investigation. Cass pointed a warning

finger and recited another line of original verse.
Envy cease thy stinging. Jealousy abate,
Hatred ease thy burning, while I meditate.

Peale retrieved the doll and held it on his lap. He teased her hair back into place.
Hed shaved enough hair off of her that night to provide pubic hair for a dozen
puppets. It was unfortunate, but necessary. Shed brought him to his knees and made
him beg. Perhaps the one thing hed never done before. And after he swore hed never
love another woman, she committed every depredation women knew to make men
suffer.

110
 He could not forget how inadequate she made him feel. Such savage degeneracy
deserved to be punished; still, he would not be separated from her tiny replica. He
would not surrender its loveliness to a vitiated creature who did not know the delicate
art of making that unspeakable kind of love flourishing among reprobates.
Shes mine, he said softly to Cass. Why do you want her; you can have the
genuine article anytime.

Cass poured his glass of beer across the table and into Peales lap. The puppeteer
leaped screaming to his feet, as if hed been scalded. He glared at the thin-cheeked
young man, and began to laugh, as if volume alone was sufficient to change the order
of things. Kass spoke in a breathless whisper without raising his voice or eyes from
the table.
Sit down, youre as mad as he is.
Peale flopped back and down into his seat, gazing in consternation at his wet
trousers. It was madness to try and reason with either Cass or George. Both had the
advantage of arguing from the lunatic fringe. They were incapable of reason. When
they spoke, their minds were like windsocks that trapped every lithe and supple
nuance a word could convey or invoke. The logic of their words was impossible to
follow and their conclusions irreconcilable.
Cass reasoned from beyond the unconscious, and George reasoned from some
infinitely removed cranial rupture that had driven his mind down into his colon. They
were both maddeningly impudent and hated each other with every fiber of their being.
Cass contended that George was a filthy celibate with dark and unholy practices
and rituals. George argued that Cass was a psychotic deviate preoccupied with self-
immolation.
Cass would gag and vomit and stick his finger down his throat and try to strangle
himself, and George would rush into the restroom and wash his hands until they
smelled of Lifebouy soap and all the paper towels were gone.

The noise from the patrons began to rise like the incoming tide. To express
contempt, Peale picked up a beer mug and threw it against a distant wall. It shattered
into a hundred pieces, sending glass in every direction. Cass handed him another mug,
but it was politely declined. Patrons seated t nearby tables watched with resentment
and curiosity filling their eyes.
Cass returned the glass to the table and stood on his chair., beat his chest and
howled like a moon-maddened demon dog. When he stopped for a breath, Peale
applauded
Bravo, bravo, encore.
Cass bowed to the scowling patrons and stepped to the floor.
Ive been looking around for another bar to frequent. Im tired of this place. Do I
look like, a tapeworm? I need a real bar, something to lean against. Besides, there are
too many people eating here. Its a filthy habit; Im giving it up tomorrow.
Cass pushed the table away from his legs and stood up. Now, if you will excuse
me, I must go. My roaches are hungry and I promised them a feast.

Canto

111
 Both Cass and Peale talked themselves into a frenzy of angry words. Cass cursed
and condemned Galea while Peale grinned and agreed with unrestrained enthusiasm.
Cass shoved his fists deep into his pockets and sifted through his mind for more
poisonous thoughts and allegations.
She sits in her darkened room with sunglasses over her eyes and breathes her hot
scented breath into drunken mens ears, he snarled. And her idiot husband makes
me sick. Hes a 45-year-old child she married out of spite: to spite herself and to spite
every man who ever wanted to get near her.
A man? My God! Every morning she drops him off at a movie theater and picks
him up in the evening. Sometimes she has to go in after him because he wants to stay
and see the cartoons again.
She is lovely, like 100,000 other women in this city, she is lovely, but shes
taken that moron for a husband. She sleeps with him, talks to him, and dedicates her
life to that useless mound of flesh. I could understand if he were retarded or mentally
handicapped, but he is simply, utterly and totally ignorant.
Shes spoiled. Beauty spoiled her, and men have turned her into a cadaver for
their lust. But shes not like other dying fruit. She doesnt fall from the tree. She wont
give a man the satisfaction of possessing her. She wont leave her husband. She
doesnt complain about him, and she only takes temporary lovers, nothing is
permanent in her life but that man. . Shell sleep with him, even though he refuses to
enter her. Shell cook for him and talk to him and take him to the movies and buy him
popcorn and soda pop. She wont complain, and she knows I still want her. She sees
me every day on the street and doesnt say a word. If I speak, she answers coolly and
hides behind her dark glasses and hustles her sweet donut hole quickly down the street.
Then she goes home and gives herself to that vegetable. I can see his stupid hands on
her body imitating something hes seen in a dirty movie, or read in a magazine in
some barbershop.
Hes the kind of degenerate you read about in newspapers. Hes the kind of man
who exposes himself to children and spends days at a time watching television or
reading comic books. Im sure he masturbates on busses and in public restrooms. Hed
probably be queer if he knew how to go about it. Things are not in his head, but in his
mouth or in his hands. Ill bet she has to unbutton his pants for him when he goes to
the bathroom. A Jesuit, my god, he wouldnt make a pimple on a Jesuits balls.
And when he sat next to me and started talking so god damned loud and grabbed
that doll, I could have killed him. Doesnt he know I want his wife? If I could just
shove it in his face, tell him he stinks and I want his wife in bed, beneath me, naked,
touching me, biting and sucking me, sweating, twisting and squeezing every once of
venom out of me. Christ, and he sits there eating candy and licking the fingers that
will crawl all over the body of the woman I want. I could kill him, I swear to God, I
could kill him with my bare hands.

The wind blew dirt and debris through the street. Cass paused several times to
conceal and protect his face and eyes, to examine the fiber of his conviction, his flaws,
his wool jacket, and his cotton trousers. He had been robbed cleanly of purpose and
reason. His feet were strangling in the dirt and filth of his worn socks; he took his

112
shoes off and threw away the socks. At the next waste bin, he took the jacket off and
threw that away too. The cheap tie he had borrowed from Peale, he removed from his
neck and cut it into several pieces. In every waste bin he passed, he deposited an item
of clothing, until he was completely naked, but carried his shoes in his hand.
The air and the pavement were cool. His reason and agility were temporarily on
sabbatical. He concentrated on jumping and dodging the roaches and vermin that
covered the sidewalk that seemed to be able to survive the cold and often deadliest
conditions.

Peale wandered back to the Lute and Lyre. He was convinced he had seen the last
of Cass, who was marching defiantly toward Galeas home an theater. When he
arrived, the doors were locked., but the lights in her apartment were on. He watched
her silhouette moving about. He kicked the door angrily and shouted from the street.

You bitch! Why are you hiding? Why dont you let me in? I want you!
He squatted on the sidewalk and howled like a wounded animal. What can I do?
he mumbled. Who will listen to the plea of a widows son? Who will help me cross
the streets and lead me through this twisting perilous path?
She no longer listened to his voice or pleas. She sat on the bed and held the dogs
muzzle against her nose. The animal slobbered and licked its mouth with its tongue.
Its large eyes were fixed on hers, as if it were awaiting a command. The dog moved
impatiently against her, anticipating

Canto

His bare and naked body and bum, and the loud taunting screams and accusations
that he flung at her drawn window shade, attracted a covey of other deranged and
endangered species that cheered and encouraged him on to a higher pitch.
You bitch! He screamed. You filthy bitch! Dont I mean anything to you!
Didnt I give you my seed, and what did you do with it, spit it out. Damn you! Come
down here and let my write you out of my life. Stop hiding from me. I am your
messiah. You do believe in messiahs, dont you? Of course you do. You go to bed
with that prick of a defrocked priest in your mouth, dont you? Do you think he can
get you closer to God? You think he is your messiah? Well, youre wrong. I am the
only messiah you will ever know. I am the only one who can save you from yourself.
Consider the birds and the bees, do they not spoil and spurn? What makes you think
you can get away with it? Come on down here and let me baptize you into the brother
and motherhood. Come down here to the river, I want to baptize you; I want to give
you my water to drink. Come down to the river. Come down.

The other degenerates in the street were applauding. Cass was not aware of their
presence or support. He felt only the tormenting need to disembowel someone or
something. T get as far inside Galea as her as her body would permit, and if that meant
cracking her skull open and eating her brains to make room, than so be it.
Anguish and frustration were changing his voice and the way he mouthed his
words. There was also something unmistakably weird glowering from his eyes. He

113
clenched his fists and beat upon his chest and thighs, but she was undecided on how
she should respond. Her eyes remained fixed on the dark and wild uncanny eyes of the
dog that guarded her room.

Cass continued to scream and curse, and the crowd continued to cheer, boo and
applaud. He stopped suddenly, turned and stared at the tormented faces watching him.
They were twisted and malignant, small and mean poisonous faces, which he had tried
to put far behind him. Standing with his bare chest and shoulders high, the crowd
slowly disbursed. They were a crowd of motley bowed and broken people. When he
rose to his full height, they shrank back and away, then pulled the collars of their shirts
and windbreakers up around their necks and tried to look indifferent.

Cass turned and walked among them, not condescending to let his smile or
wonder touch anyone at all. When his angry eyes collided with another pair of eyes,
that person averted his, turned and walked away, disappearing around a corner, or into
a doorway, or down into a sewer.

Canto

He could see her supple body standing naked in the window of the darkened room.
He could see her in his minds eye quite clearly. One of her dogs had bitten her breast
and the blood was flowing down her side. If she came to him, he would lay her out on
her side on the cold concrete street and drink her blood until he drained her heart.
She moved behind the glass. Her hands leaped up to her breasts; she slowly aimed
one at him. a fusilier waiting with a cannon. He felt a surge of power ripple through
his loins. She fired a volley, an invisible volley of seduction through the window. He
swayed. He could see the smile spreading across her face and into the far corners of
her mouth, into the symbolism of her character. She was smiling at his desire and pain.
He pleaded with his eyes. She cupped the other breast within her hand and
pointed both at him. She puckered her lips and tried sucking him up and through her
window and into her mouth. He felt his feet leave the ground. She suddenly spit him
out and on the earth.
The will and desire in his body abated as quickly as it had taken flame. She pulled
at her breasts savagely opening an old wound that had started to heal. The blood
flowed freely and the bite began to throb. She pinched her breasts and laughed when
he winced from the pain. He turned from the window and walked away. She smashed
at the glass with her fists, but he refused to return. The glass shattered; she shoiuted
his name and waved her arms, which were covered in sweat and blood.

The hard concrete now hurt his feet. He put on his shoes and at every wastebasket
retrieved the article of clothing he had discarded. At the Lute & Lyre, he would soak
his feet in the barrel of raw oysters behind the oyster bar, and when they were all eaten,
he would return to the Phoenix Hotel, or to Cleos apartment and eat whatever he
could find. He would drink whatever liquor was available and sleep with the young
Spanish and black girls who sat on the front steps from midnight till dawn. He would

114
screw them and their mothers, their sisters and brothers, if that is what it took to
restore order in the world and his mind.

Canto

Titus Peachy was sitting on the curb

In front of the Lute & Lyre
And laughing softly to himself
His head was wrapped in dirty white bandages;
Blood flowed from a cut lip and his nose.
His new artificial leg was lying across his chest
broken in six different pieces.
He grinned through a mouth bloody with
broken teeth protruding from his gums.

His was an irrepressible happy and dying smile.

He scratched at the stub of his leg and
Gestured at the mouthful of broken teeth.
Cass embraced him and wiped the blood
From his mouth and kissed him on the lips.
Titus smiled and tried to speak through swollen lips
And a mouth filling rapidly with blood.
He choked down the blood and phlegm and spoke:
My new girl friend; shes a lesbian and loves to fight.
Cass tried to help, but Titus refused.. He said he
Wanted to sit on the curb and watch the reflection
Of lights from passing autos in the liquor store window.
Cass gave him money. He put a handful of change
In his pocket and chopped-up mouth.
Titus smiled the contented smile of a new bride
And closed his eyes serenely. In a few minutes,
hordes of young blacks would descend upon him
Like a school of piranha and
Tear him to pieces for the change.
Kass pressed his thumbs against his temples
And closed his eyes, vowing silently to murder
As often as his conscience would permit
In order to atone for Peachys excruciating pleasure.

Kass entered the L&L. It was filled to overflowing. Cleo clamped him to her
breasts and nearly sucked his eyeballs from his face. Her belly kept him far enough
away to give him pause. She led him to a table occupied by Peale and the black and
blind-eyed poet Dangerfield. The poet touched Casss passing leg, but quickly moved
his hand away. The leg was hard. It was not the soft leg of a patronizing man, but the
leg of a tyrant. The poet was silent, not daring to speak. If he spoke now, he knew his

115
voice would reveal the old fears, the old Negro fears of blood-spilling and blood-
drinking white men.
Cass read his mind through the Browne wrinkled smile and stared at the blind
frightened poet. Dangerfield felt the white mans smile crawl over his face. Cass
laughed and dismissed the old Negros fear with a burning beer-belly belch. The poet
laughed and shook the table. Peale mumbled a solemn profanity under his breath. He
poured beer into a glass and slid it over the table. He could not help but wonder about
his young friends disreputable torn and tattered wardrobe. Kass lifted the glass and
examined the beer. His mouth spread into a smile.
Peale shook his head and grinned. What kind of monkey shit have you been
getting into?
Kass drank the beer slowly. The froth on the head vanished. His hands were
wrapped tightly around the glass and his fingers writhed like worms in a can. He
grinned and weaved from side to side.
You know what I think of questions and answers. If youve got something to say,
say it; if not then hold your peace.
Dangerfield scratched a rash upon his neck until it bled. When the blood began to
flow freely and covered his fingertips, he wiped them off on his trousers.
Cass turned his pocket inside out looking for change to pay for the beer, while
Peale laughed and picked coins from among the lint on the table.
Id like to thank them all, Cass said.
Who do you want to thank this time? Peale asked.
Cass drank his beer and watched the rising bubbles turn to crispy foam. The poet
scratched a blister on his head, while his blind and bloodshot eyes turned in his skull
to examine a corrugation in his brain.
I want to thank those perverts who prevent others from having any kind of life. I
want to thank those who can do nothing but try and extract money from those who
have so little. I want to thank those who are so anxious to die for such ridiculous
causes.
Dangerfield sneered and ground the full weight of his tyranny and villainy against
a cracked and decaying bicuspid that was slowly rotting away.

Canto

The door of the L&L flung open and

Titus Peachy hobbled in on one leg and fell over a chair.
His head slammed upon the floor and his arm lay
In the open fireplace among the burning logs.
Blood flowed from his ears and his stained brittle teeth while
His eyes rolled in their sockets like bearings.
Seeing nothing, sensing nothing, an alien body
Made of ceiling wax and an unknown putrescence.
A life-sized doll stuffed with wood lice and maggots;
A zombie, brain-baked, nauseating to look upon
But still alive, still fouling the air; taking nourishment
From unknown sources, sucking scabrous wounds,

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 Eating human filth and garbage, dead cats, discarded
Condoms, scum, rat entrails, pigeon shit, corpses, dirt,
Sewage and old theater seats. A mindless, harmless
Mammal driving anyone mad who dared to penetrate
his theme. A single-cell being that barely perceived light.

He removed his hand and arm from the fire

And sniffed the blackened flesh, grinned and
Offered it to others for a taste. They vomited
Into their beer and cheese corn.
One old girl tried desperately to stuff
The burnt arm up and into her body, but
His fingernails fell off, and the sizzling meat
On his fingers slipped from the bone.
The epidermis burst like the skin
Of a baked potato, blood boiled and coagulated.
The flesh on his arm w as like burnt piecrust.
People gathered around to watch and smell.
He chewed into the wooden floor and
Spit out chunks of wood, and tooth
And lip and tongue. Tears filled his eyes
And he began to laugh.
A woman took him in her arms,
Kissed him fondly on his splintered mouth
And said, be still.
The police and the ambulance attendants,
The de-sanctified crowd filled the caf
And cried out for more.
They put his body on a stretcher and
When someone asked, what happened?
Someone else answered, attempted suicide.
He grinned and admired his beautifully
Blackened and burnt arm and waved
Goodbye with it to the crowd. The paramedics
Held his arm down and stuck it with needles;
He smiled gratefully and dreamed about
The white starched sheets, pure as a nuns collar,
And the uniformed women, who would labor
For hours over his repulsive body with
Needles and salves and tight-fitting bandages,
And he hoped it would never end.

Canto

When the sounds of the ambulance were lost in the distance, the poet of ringworm
and bad breath stabbed the air with his chocolate-coated fingers. He exposed his

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stained teeth in a reluctant smile and said, Ive written a new poem. It is so
blasphemous I fear for the life and safety of my soul. Would you like to hear it?
No one answered, so he began to recite.

The Fires of Hell are Not as Hot as They Used to be.

A poem
by R.C. Dangerfield.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does Jesus know?

The sheep in the hills that graze near the mills
Perhaps they told him so.
Does he know of that holy night
When you alone first saw the light
And you lay down on the cold, cold sod
And spread your young soft thighs to God?
Now Im not mocking His tragedy
And his mothers virtue means nought to me.
The legend is so that it can be abused;
The story is stale its been so misused.
I think the man Christ was a hell of a guy
To run around town in a snow white gown.
I imagine he saw many a sneer
And heard voices claiming he was queer;
Eating and drinking with 12 virile men
And cavorting with whores in a robbers den.
Christ liked his booze and an occasional lay,
And he still found time to think and pray.
He denied his mother, I think I know why,
She told him one hell of an obvious lie.
Though he tried, he still couldnt swallow
The pitch about his virgin birth.
He didnt tell Joe, an obvious schmoe,
Who fell right in line like a real paladin.
He sheltered poor Mary, her image, her cherry
And grew up to be an unorthodox fairy.

Canto

By the time the black poet finished reading his poem, Peale was gone. He pushed
his way through a press of untouchable harlots and drunken men and vanished into the
darkness. A heavy fog thick enough to strangle children in their sleep hung about the
streetlights. Faces and footsteps emerged and disappeared beneath the neon-colored
blue-glass light of glowing windows.
Cass shared a pitcher of beer with the poet and talked about Cleo and Galea, as if
he were a pimp and they his pimpets. When the conversation turned to the black arts
of women, the poet licked his lips; a thread of drool hung from his mouth to his chin

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and chest. He boasted of sucking and chewing on Cleos plump breasts and claimed he
had a nipple to prove it.

The black poet smelled like old clothes and bedsores. Considering the number of
women hed eaten or screwed, it was a wonder their rank body odors had not
overwhelmed his own. But the black poet lived to be denied; he was a black Judas and
knew the importance of denial. He also knew he stunk and tolerating his odor was a
prerequisite to his patronage. If a man didnt have the balls to tell him he stunk, the old
poet would piss all over him, and all over himself as well. Once that stream of hot
poison had raised a rash on white skin, there was no way of ever getting over it.

How do you manage to smell so bad, shit your pants everyday?

Dangerfield grinned. The gray gummy pupil in his blind eye bulged
I got to keep a respectable distance between me and you white-faced Christian
pricks, else you be crawling all over me, raping me with kindness and special
consideration.

They drank the dark beer from the pitcher. The poet laughed softly to himself
every few seconds, tried to break the glass mug in his teeth and pressed his sightless
eyes shut. The stench of his gas and his belches emptied a nearby table. The bartender
snarled and sprayed the area with an aerosol. Several old harlots sitting at the bar
frowned in disgust, wiggled their bottoms on the bar stool and buried their noses in
glasses of warm beer. A young fairy made flippant flipping gestures with his fingertips
and eyebrows, and a man eating a plate of oysters hesitated and thought profoundly
before continuing.

Canto

When Peale returned to his room, he made a black doll from a dirty sock and
drove a nail through its heart. No one had even noticed or cared that hed lost nearly
25 pounds. He sliced an orange and wrapped the peelings in the voodoo doll sock and
dropped it out the window from the 16th floor, missing the litter basket entirely, but
only by a matter of inches.
It was a symbolic gesture. He didnt dislike Dangerfield, but he did resent his
blasphemous poetry, if it could be called poetry.
Peale knew he shared a common lot with the Supreme and Inspired Master
Puppeteer of the universe. Peale too was a master puppeteer but only in the trivial
solar system. He too created and destroyed on a much smaller scale, but size was
relative. The galaxy was small compared to the universe. Perhaps the God of the
galaxy might be small compared to the God of the universe.

Peale breathed the orange-flavored breath of life into a saintly-clad hand puppets
rather large and open mouth. He placed his thumb and fingers in her short arms and
one finger in her head and neck and forced her crudely down between his legs. He had
many things in common with the Master Puppeteer, including masturbation. When
God masturbated, he created a new cosmos. He lay on his bed and summoned his

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pinky-sized deity into play. He prayed that Dangerfields attempts to write poetry meet
with failure and frustration. He also asked the virgin mother of God to gratefully
accept his humble offering and to please hold it in her mouth a little longer.

Canto

On his way to Cleos apartment, Cass ran into Clarence in a downtown cafeteria.
He was a regular client of Cleos who may or may not have been the parent of one or
both of her children. He was a bit player and incidental to the scheme of things. He
was wearing his unimposing pin stripe suit and accompanied by a ghoulish grin. He
licked his fat lips when he spoke and his tongue coated them with a slithery coating.
He owned a few restaurants around town and hired only waitresses that did not object
to sucking his dick.
Cass became more estranged to Cleo from just looking at him. He was diseased,
sick and unhealthy. Corruption kinked his hair and pocked his skin. His teeth jutted
out like the teeth in a bleached skull. His tiny eyes were buried between his wide
cheekbones. His eyebrows were bushes and his big mouth never stopped grinning.
Naked, he would have resembled a Neanderthal, but he concealed his degeneracy
beneath expensive clothes, jeweled watches, onyx rings, diamond stickpins, gold cuff
links and patent leather shoes. He said he made a lot of money doing something for the
US government, but he never talked about it. He always smiled and grinned whenever
anyone asked and acted like his work was top secret.

Cleo was sitting on the commode nude when Cass arrived. Her elbows rested on
her knees and she held a mirror in her hand. She sniffed and pressed her lips against
the mirror while tears ran down her cheeks. Her straight blonde hair hung halfway
down her back. Her red swollen eyes attested to her grief. She touched the tears with
her fingertips and crushed them against the mirror tracing a despairing womans
twisted mouth and eyes. Softly, melodiously, she crooned and kissed her image in the
mirror.
I love you, I love you, Cleo, and I want you to be good, she said.
Her eyes begged for sympathy and understanding.
Concealed by darkness, Cass laughed and mocked her sadness. She turned when
she heard the sound of his voice, a fire burning in her eyes.
Cass, you damned filthy monster; youve got no right to come here.
She threw the mirror, hit him in the mouth and chipped his tooth. Warm beads of
blood blossomed on his throbbing lip. She loosed a stream of profanity. He lowered
his head and eyes. She pummeled him with angry words. He took her in his arms,
lifted her from the pot and pressed his bleeding mouth against hers. She drank his
blood and kissed his face and eyes.

Casss eyes were open and dark, and as sharp as his knife. How good it would feel
to bed her again, to press against her warm and tireless flesh, to feel her
uncompromising body lumped against his own; bursting with ripeness, mountainous, a
colossus among women, her great tremulous thighs rising into the air, crushing the

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consciousness fem his mind, inundating, emulating, an untapped flood of hysteria
down and out into the chorus of white shouting, liquid shaking and heavy love making.
Then he laughed and listened to her fingertips writing in the core of his flesh,
naughty words, lashing and inciting and inspiring him to great deeds.

There was still play in her. He was full of lust and dark desire, and there was still
play in her. She teased him like an old tired whore teases unseasoned boys by
spreading her legs and gesturing suggestively. She made leering faces at him and
pulled at the hair beneath her round tummy. He laughed at her antics, but there was
murder in his laughter, and for the first time, she heard it.
She stopped showing her teeth and the bright whites of her eyes when she smiled,
or when she listened to the sound of his laughter. She listened very carefully, as if its
dire content could reveal old mysteries.
He ran his hand over her body. She was as cold as a fish and her face was tense
and drawn tight enough to be lead. She blinked uncontrollably when he stroked her
chin. And when he smiled at her, a scatter-toothed grin appeared behind his lips.
Bloody stubs and bleeding gums. His tongue was busy measuring space and
smoothing down the barbed and chipped enamel of his gnashing teeth.

She threw herself into his arms and tried not to regret. His bones protruded
irregularly through his shirt. His body was not as soft as and comforting to her as it
was a few months, weeks, days ago. She felt only the cold pressure of hard bones
instead of the warmth and resilient comfort of flesh. While she tried to escape, tears
filled her eyes.
The sensitive nipples of her breasts were pressed painfully against the course and
dirty shirt he wore. She could sense his cruel and impatient grin. At the same time, his
hands rubbed those soft and sensitive corners of her body where she administered her
greatest care. He was like a stray mongrel, a caitiff, nuzzling the ripped interior of a
dead rabbit. His unshaven face scraped like sandpaper against her cheek and neck, her
stomach and those soft white columned thighs she once enjoyed clamping around his
neck.
This was not love. This bony man who once professed love for her no longer
understood her body; if he could understand he would be fat and slow, and his tongue
would be like a dogs tongue, not a cats. And his face would not scar her lovely
thighs, and his hands would not pound her bursting breasts. This was not love.
Her body chilled, then tensed. Her well dried up and all his fire could not ignite
her. She was deeply distraught. His love was like an act of hatred. She pushed him
away and tried to reclaim what was left of her pride. She walked to the dressing table,
recovered a half-smoked butt and lit it again. She returned to the bed.

You know those two midgets who moved in upstairs? Well, theyre queer. The
landlady told me. She said she looked through the keyhole and saw them going at it.
They play basketball in their room. I can hear them dribbling. They got a hoop nailed
into the mantle over the fireplace. Neither one of them works. They have been living
off the graham crackers and marshmallows the last tenant left.

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 A girl comes to see them everyday. Shes all wrong. Her husband sells magazines.
I dont know what she does to those two little gnomes, but when she leaves, her eyes
are all glassy and she staggers, like shes had something pretty huge shoved up her
behind. They grin and giggle and jump all over the place and peek out the window at
her. Two little gnomes. They got no respect for whats normal and decent. They ought
to be drawn and quartered and their crooked little bodies fed to pigs.

Cass produced a pint bottle from his pocket. It was wrapped in a Browne paper
bag. He unscrewed the cap and upended the contents into his mouth.
You want to go out tonight? A walk on the beach might be nice, and the air is
warm.

Canto

She wore a purple raincoat on the bus. He read the Sunday funnies and tried to get
her drunk. Not even the raincoat could conceal her pregnancy.
She held his arm and walked beside him on the boardwalk. He sipped from the
bottle and lead her down the steps toward the beach. It was after midnight and the
beach was deserted. The spray of the sea dampened her hair and made it straight and
stringy. Her blood shot eyes rolled convulsively back in her head as she staggered
down along in the deepening tide. The waves washed the sand from beneath her feet
and caused her to fight for balance. She swiped the stringy hair from her eyes with the
back of her hand.

They removed their clothes and Cass sprawled before her naked on the wet sandy
beach. She covered herself with the raincoat. He still held the almost empty bottle of
whisky tightly in his hand. She kneeled beside him, removed the bottle slowly from
his fingers and drank the few remaining drops.
The sound of the waves breaking on the shore drowned out the barely audible
sounds coming from her mouth. She tried to make him hear and respond. He remained
motionless and silent slumbering in the sand, eyes closed and hands crossed over his
chest.
She started walking toward the boardwalk He grabbed her by the ankles and
pulled her to the ground. Her right arm extended to help support her stomach. He
clamped her face between his hands and pressed his lips to hers. She writhed beside
him, a willing and anxious victim.
In a disquieting rage, he turned away and climbed slowly to his feet. She pleaded
and held onto his leg. He kicked her shoulder knocking her away. She began to sob
and moan. He ran laughing back to the boardwalk. With difficulty, she got to her feet
and followed him down the beach. When she caught up, he was perched naked on the
wooden steps holding a full pint of whisky in his hand.
She lunged toward the bottle and tried to tear it from his hand. He jumped from
the steps and ran down the beach. She followed, whining and stumbling behind. He
ran into the surf to discourage her, but she followed him into the sea.
She begged and pleaded with him to share the contents of the bottle; he finally
gave in and passed it to her. She raised it quickly to her lips and drank deeply, but only

122
for a second, before she gagged and spit the liquid out of her mouth. Cass laughed and
pulled the bottle roughly from her hands.
He ran and danced around her in the surf, grabbed the raincoat and tore it from
her body. She stood naked in the surf, her flesh trembling in the night air. Her great
stomach quivered in the night. The water lapped about her taut navel. When she bent
over to retrieve the coat, Cass knocked her down upon the beach. She began to softly
plead and moan. Her body jerked in quick and nervous spasms, and waves of pain
rolled inside of her.
Please, help me, Cass, help me!
Cass danced around her fallen body.
Help me, Cass. Its starting to happen!
Her coat churned in the surf as he jumped and danced around her and emptied the
rest of his urine from the whisky bottle into her screaming mouth.

Canto

It had been an angry and unforgiving night. Her life had drifted slowly out to sea
upon the midnight tide. His fleeting madness turned too quickly into a sharp blade of
steel and slipped effortlessly into her soft core. He could hear her screams, as if in a
dream, as he swam to the surface.
Desire found her gasping beneath him in some strange parody of delight. He
pressed his lips against her mouth and his steel member snacked anxiously upon her
flesh. The wounds came in a succession of distinct rhythmic waves each one hissing
and bubbling in tune to the sea and the frothy wake of his body. Each wave was more
chilling than the last, until the final breathless moment when an ejaculation set his
sharp canine teeth on edge.
The wet heavy sea, warm as maidens milk, bound them together. A love potion
full of anxiety had silenced her timeless pain and stopped her violent convulsions.
Thick as a Paleolithic sea, her blood flowed until an earthen glaze spread over her
sadly disturbed face. Her lips and teeth parted and her eyes gazed into the deep secrets
of stars and everything else that loomed in the dark, liquid universe.

Canto

He clawed the neurotic dead-weight sleep from his swollen eyes. It had rained all
night. He slept beneath the boardwalk. Dry stale lipstick was caked in patches at the
corner of his mouth. He scraped the sour taste away with a fingertip. A long dull
silence seemed to follow his awakening. Scabrous rays of bleached sunlight split
through a cosmos of soot and gray morning light. His brain fried inside his head.
His skin was crawling off his bones. Invisible pests, sand fleas and hordes of
prehistoric vermin attacked his body. His dry scalp, dandruff, congestion and
innumerable irritations troubled him to no end. He scraped and dug furiously at the
hundred aggravations until his nails were filled with blood, flesh and dirt.

Canto

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 He knew she was dead. Her death, in small black print, the papers crooned.
Nameless and without fame, she left her bitter fitful life to venture on unholy
ground. A pathetic epitaph, he thought.
It was a dark Saturday night, the paper said. The police found the remains of a
fire, some drops of blood, and dung, but nothing of the child ripped from her womb.
No one doubted that Cass had held his bloody Sabbath on that spot and had most
likely devoured the unborn child in the company of cannibals, as is often done among
the citys poor and wretched.
Im sure his teeth are long and sharp enough to eat a child, Peale said. And I
wouldnt be surprised if Galea had some, too. And those dogs of hers are a little too
mischievous for there not to be some wickedness afoot.
What has become of Cass? Peale asked mechanically, repeating the words so
many had asked before.
Some said they saw him on the beach in the dusk of the previous evening. Others
had seen him at daybreak walking on the boardwalk.
Perhaps hes drowned? Peale suggested, but others disagreed.
Im inclined to think he went off on a mission; not out of the city, but out of his
friggin mind, George volunteered.

Canto

He had forgotten for one unforgivable moment how to respond to those in pain.
Once he could have shared and understood her morbidity and dismay, but now, such
interventions were meaningless. He was without the proper credentials or authority to
express his curious feelings. He tried to recall the name of the strange poem that
dogged his thoughts and why he could not recall a single word of their last
conversation, but his mind had been shuttered against such delicate revelations. Voices
of faceless women robed in infamy drifted through back alleys of his waking dream.

She hadnt made a sound, merely a little groan. It was best to leave before she had
grown too cold and stiff. He was the last one. Some of the distillate from his soul was
still in her, he marveled, still alive and in pursuit of eternity. But they couldnt track
him down from that. It would have been tainted, perhaps corrupted, by salt water and
plankton. Besides, she was just a cheap whore, a pregnant pickup; no one knew her
name. Shes through now, cold, stiff. Dead.
The thought provoked his laughter and it echoed beneath the boardwalk. A cloud
dark as the smoke from a funeral pyre passed slowly overhead. Cass wore no clothing,
only Cleos purple plastic raincoat. It was still wet from the sea and the rain.

Canto

The bells in the church began to toll. The black-robed Jesuits, black birds of prey,
forever lurking menacingly behind cathedral doors, and armed with their golden
candle lighters and snuffers, suddenly rushed out to purge the steps of refuse.
They tried to drive, kick and push Cass off the steps and into the gutter to get him
out of sight before the early morning worshippers arrived. Cass rolled down the stone

124
steps laughing, weeping and pleading for Christian mercy. The Jesuits laughed at their
sport, rubbed their round bellies and wiped his blood and snot from their shiny black
shoes. Casss mouth filled with dirt and blood; he spat a scarlet pattern on the concrete
sidewalk.
A young priest bent over and wiped the blood from his mouth and nose; he helped
him sit upright on the curb. Cass kissed the priests hand and begged him to hear his
confession. The priest nodded, helped Cass to his feet and walked him toward the
confessional. Inside the church, Cass buried his face in his folded hands and began:
Bless me father for I have sinned, my last confession was
The priest began to mumble his chant, mantra, and prayers, and Cass continued:
I caught Tom, the cat, eating his own shit, so I murdered him. I took him by the
tail and bashed his skull against the wall. I could not tolerate a mean feline practicing
such god-like eccentricities. It was too revolting to contemplate. Only the Great
Devourer is allowed to practice such a contemptible sport. Only the Great Devourer
may consume that which he has created or ejected. You do know that we were ejected
from Gods anus when we were driven out of the Garden of Paradise. Only the Great
Devourer may take nourishment from his own waste. Only the Great Devourer may
become more of himself by devouring himself. Only the Great Devourer.
While I was beating Toms brains out against the wall, he shit on my hand, so I
did not bother to bury him. I threw him into the creek without so much as a goodbye.
That cat used to have class. He used to sit up all night reading back issues of Playboy
and other sexually-oriented material. He enjoyed stiffing the pictures of the nudes. He
possessed the subtle cool aloofness of the true celibate. He thought with his genitals.
His balls were two little brains that worked as smoothly as ball bearings. He pissed
and defecated all over the slick magazines. Not a blonde, brunette or redhead was
sacred to him. The youngest and sweetest hometown queens were treated with like
indifference and distaste. He lived only to squat over their shiny bosoms and slick
derrieres and drop his foul and vile smelling stools. My god, the beauty of it all! Then
he would turn the page and seal the raucous odor in. If only they new about it in
Chicago!
He was an arrogant bastard. He sharpened his claws on Dante and Cicero. He
held nothing in reverence. He even pissed on a book of poems by D.H. Lawrence. But
Playboy was his favorite. I dont know if it was the glossy finish or the content that
inspired him. Then one day, it happened: I caught him playing God, nibbling a foul
stool! There is no room in my heart for gods, I had to murder him.
The young pries ran screaming from the confessional, failing even to assign a
single Act of Contrition or penance to Cass.

Canto

Cass followed the last of the early morning worshippers into the street. He washed
down the phlegm of white magic and mystery with utter disbelief and wandered
among the casual blend of timeless faces. He lost himself in their hourglass smiles and
in the pendulum like movement of their eyes, in their decided and hurried strides to
nowhere, and in their sullen apathy toward the heroism of life.

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 The wind scattered his thoughts and blew dust devils composed of dirt and debris
into the air. A massive gray sheet of dullness spread across the empty sky and pressed
ever closer to the earth. The sun probed the clouds for a rent or a tear. Slowly and
abandoned by thought, Cass kicked a path through the fallen leaves.

Canto

He knew they had found her and she was far beyond awakening. Eventually they
would remand her to the custody of a cubicle of empty space in the earth, bid her
farewell and launch her on a voyage in an air tight vessel that would span eternity, and
all that she would ever see or know would be the back of Lincolns neck.
He could not help but think of the six feet trough of rough earth the gravediggers
would be cursing over and urinating in.

His mind was filled with darkness. He walked through a maze of empty
neighborhoods seeking the sanctity of all-embracing sleep. In a small quiet park, he
found an abandoned and unsecured plot of ground. He crawled on his hands and knees
and concealed himself beneath a shrub. His voice, a jumbled choir of discontent,
spoke from the ragged pinnacle of regret.
The great men lied to me. They cant and re-cant, banter, palaver, jive and trash
and flapdoodle and rail, when a twig or a sparrow or a rose expires; but when the
entire universe is spinning off its axis, they clutch their belts and heave their trousers
over their navels and click their tongues, and turn their backs on those of us who must
see it through.
Tears however were not part of the package. Grief did not belong exclusively to
one man. It was a common denominator. He gathered up his memories, tied them in a
box and went someplace to find the sleep and dreams hed lost.

For seven years hed laid in her arms, in the arms of Calypso, and each time he
tried to leave, she called him back. She promised him wealth, fame and immortality,
but now a more recent message from the gods advised her that it was time for him to
be released.
She warned him time and again not to kill the sun gods sheep and cows, but
would he listen?

Canto

Have you seen Cass? Peale asked. Ive looked every where for him. I think
hes planning to leave us, to go somewhere far away. Far beyond the reach and smell
of hunger and despair, to the ends of the earth, where skilled technicians and
professionals blend in nicely with lawns that are cluttered with dog shit. Where the
professionals all use the same bath soap and deodorants that smell like urinal cakes in
taverns. I think he is planning to return to the land of power mowers and cloudless
blue skies, book-of-the-month clubs, cheerleaders and vestal teen-age virgins.
I think he longs for that land, which is profaned only by chrome tailpipes and
uncut hair, or too much hair oil. I think it is a well known fact that he hankers to return

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to that land unaffected by mischievous symbols and esoteric gestures, pure in its desire
for homogenization, a land cloaked in a robe of demure sobriety, pregnant with
unconsciousness, delirious in orgasm, and inviolate in rapture.

George added: I think he wants to go home so he can stick his prick between the
teeth and lips of some hometown queen and urinate.
George did not lift his head from the table or bother to remove his hand from the
glass of beer. He spoke slowly with little interest or concern.

I am told by friendly friars that he goes to the Catholic Church every night to
sleep. Sometimes he has to pick the lock to get in. The priests know and hate him.
They kick him out and curse him all the time, but he keeps coming back. Theres
something about a church he likes. He sits on the altar and pees in the chalice. The
Jesuits hate him and call down disaster upon his filthy lice-infested head, but nothing
ever happens; he grows fat on sacrificial bread and wine.
Sometimes he just sits and stares at the cross and the man nailed there-on. He
brings in pictures of girls from nudie magazines and displays them to the saintly
statues. Once in a while, he bursts into fits of loud laughter and falls from the altar.
The blood he sheds will open locked doors someday, and hell probably die a martyr. I
cant imagine how ridiculous a corona will look around his head.
If you really want to see him, the L&L is reciting a Rosary for Cleo tonight at the
funeral home. He will probably be there. He promised her children he would take
them.

Canto

The broad-faced priest in a stainless white collar hovered in an aura of mysticism

over the body of Cleo. Everyone came to attention, as if they expected her to sit up in
her casket and participate. The monotonous litany of prayer began.
Mortified by the presence of money changers and strange persons selling doves,
sheep and rams for sale as sacrifice, Cass moved to the back of the room. The prayers
too, he suspected, were uttered in thoughtless and reckless abandon and were not
conducive to the mood or spirit of a proper hecatomb.
The priest however had far too many other social obligations to take notice. He
could not afford to waste time on this one unnamed unfortunate who had lived and
died in his parish and had somehow escaped his influence. He knew that no amount of
prayer could work the magic the living had come to suspect. His prayers were
consolation for the living and balm for the conscience. Why hed even deigned to lead
this group in a rosary was the most baffling mystery of all.
He was most anxious to return to his domesticated flock of sheep that knew how
to pray and were willing to pay the proper tribute due one such prayer leader. He was
also anxious to prepare for his Thursday night discussion group, where his discussions
on natural birth control were met with blushes from the new young brides and sly
grins from the initiated.
He would not wait for a prayer to end before he began another. It was a trick hed
learned as a child. Hed also served mass this morning and was tired of kneeling. He

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had unthinkingly worn a newly pressed cassock and did not want to wrinkle it. He was
most anxious to return to the parish house; he had left before lunch and his Salisbury
steak was getting cold and the gravy would probably ferment. He prayed the cook
would have the good sense to put it in the oven. He was also cursing under his breath
and prayers, and wished the young dead woman had been more attractive and
voluptuous to make his ordeal all the more bearable. He decided to end the rosary by
skipping one Our Father and three Hail Marys.

Upon completion, the young Jesuit sprang quickly to his feet, dusted the knees of
his cassock and bolted for the door. Cass got to his feet and followed close behind. As
the priest exited, Cass slammed the door on his heels and caught his cassock. The
priest tried desperately to pull it loose, but Cass would not release it. He held the door
firmly. Through the door, he heard the priest calling on his savior for assistance.
Jesus Christ Almighty, someone open this God damned door!
Cass was on the point of giggling when the funeral director tactfully shuttled him
away. The priest opened the door and freed his cassock while casting disparaging
glances around the room.
Cass apologized to Cleo. He did not want to offend her. It was one thing to
destroy, recycle, induce a reincarnation, but another thing to willfully offend. She
would have expected him to do something to save her from the wretched hexing of the
Jesuit. When he examined her face for laugh lines, he could find none. The mortician
had successfully concealed her identity.
She would not have approved of his behavior, but it would have amused her. She
would have had to conceal a devilish grin every time she saw a Jesuit. She would have
grown old laughing up her sleeve at the priesthood. It was the least he could do for her,
since he could not afford flowers.
He spoke apologetically to the funeral director:
I tried to make special arrangements with the florist for payment, he said. But
he was distrustful of strangers. I tried to impress upon him my fiscal solubility by
showing him my library card, but he was not impressed. He wanted cash. I would have
borrowed the money from my mother, but she borrowed my last ten dollars to pay her
insurance premium. I decided to forego flowers and try to be twice as pious.

Everyone attending apologized for her untimely death. As if they had honed the
scythe death had used to reap his harvest. The victim belonged to the doer of the deed.
It has always been that way. It is in his mind that she will live and die over and over
again. He crossed himself and knelt beside her. He couldnt pray, She knew he
couldnt pray. He had forgotten the magic words that rained down absolution . Instead,
he told her little lies she would have liked to hear about her kids.

The minions of death had combed her hair and colored her lips and rouged her
molded cheeks. She looked like a life-sized doll. Someone said her face was not right,
but he knew the grub worms would not mind. She had a one-family face, and half her
family had escaped life before she was born.

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 She slept peacefully in her narrow metal box. Neither the sun, nor the lights, nor
the noise of the priest and his unorthodox laughter disturbed her.
They came to watch her sleep. They watched and anticipated the flutter of a lash,
the heaving of a breast, the movement of a lip, but she slept undisturbed. Neither the
closeness of the box, nor the rosary beads chained around her fingers disturbed her.
The oppressive fragrance of the flowers, the burning tapers, the smoking pot of
incense, the chants, the prayers, the foul and corrupt breath, the crucifix, the cold draft
upon her bare feet, nothing disturbed her.

While she rested in a bed of flowers, a tiny nun prayed hurriedly through a final
Rosary. While the Our Fathers and Hail Marys cascaded from her tongue, the
impatient crept out the back door.
The funeral director concluded the service and the mourners left to go to work. At
three oclock they removed her from view, the curtains were drawn, the candles were
extinguished, the flowers rushed to the cemetery, and the corpse was sealed foever
within the confines of the coffin to continue her undisturbed sleep.
Green outdoor carpeting surrounded the open hole. A canvas tarp billowed
overhead in the wind. Brass posts with velvet-clothed chains were arranged to prevent
mourners from falling in the open hole.. There was some haste in the workmens
preparation. Clouds were gathering overhead, and she had not yet been released from
her obligations to the living.
A few thoughtful words and a thank you kindly, and she was gone silently into
that dark night.. They smiled and laughed when Cass buttoned his suit jacket and the
rotten fiber gave way. While nameless and unknown friends mourned her loss, the
silent uncommitted hundred million ovum withering in wombs were incredulous at the
mad ceremony.

Canto
Cass spent a restless evening destroying his work. His poems, the shards of his
broken thoughts written in pen and pencil, the growing stack of notebooks, the
typewritten sheets of paper whose illegible words contained the heart of his existence,
were consigned to the fire. He read through each sentence quickly and destroyed them
one-by-one. They contained little or nothing of value. Among the thousands of
liberated words his chaotic mind had created, he could not find two, no matter how
cleverly juxtaposed, resembled anything meaningful. He patiently shredded the pages
in his hand and fed them to the flames. He could almost see the words take shape and
form in smoke and paint the sky with their dark messages; messages for the gods as
indecipherable to them as their messages were to him. He spent a restless evening
excising the past from his mind.

He did not know what had become of the first 300,000 words hed spun in empty
air, while wandering back and forth in a search for something good. Neither did he
know what had become of the person he thought hed left far behind, or if anything
would ever appear in proper perspective again.

Canto

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 He flipped the shaving head of the adjustable razor open and removed the dried
soap and hair-covered blade. He searched the mirror with his eyes for some sign of
sympathy or understanding, and softly began reciting the prayer he had heard being
mumbled all day.
Our father who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name
He held the blade delicately between his thumb and forefinger.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
He pulled the blade sharply and deeply over his wrist, while marveling at the
tenacity of his tendons.
On earth as it is in heaven.
The hot sting of the razors pain preceded the first rhythmic pulse of blood.
Give us this day our daily bread
He took the blade from his right hand with trembling fingers sticky with bright
coagulating blood.
And forgive us our trespasses
The blade slashed cleanly through the tendons in the other wrist.
As I forgive those who trespassed against me
The bright red blood splashed gaily into the enamel basin.
And lead us not into temptation
Tears welled up in his eyes and rolled down his cheek, nearly blinding his vision.
And deliver us from evil
His wrists throbbed with every beat of his heart, but the pain was beginning to
subside.
For thine is the kingdom ..
He sank back against the tile wall and slid to the floor, carefully cupping his
bleeding wrists in his lap.
of heaven
He closed His eyes, sighed deeply and dreamed the infinite dream of sleep.
Amen.
As the light over the mirror darkened, and the sound of his heartbeat grew faint in
his head, he could hear the voices of Cleos children calling him through the locked
bathroom door.
Can we please have some more cola, Cass? Can we, please, more Cola?

His name in small black print, the papers crooned. Nameless and without fame, he
left this place to wander on far away unholy ground. All that his solemn madness
knew was strewn like a martyrs holy relics, as is the wealth of plundered graves. Life
does not pause and trouble over the silent dead. Great and small alike are nought but
fleas nesting in the hair of some black Deitys head.

THE END

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