an absence, a bare vibration; but he w asn’t a trick, he was a
cute boy, true love and real romance, remember him I instruct
m yself because it’s hard, rape’s hard, remem bering’s hard,
they have to break so much there’s no deep deep enough to
bury it in, they leave you with crushed bones, diced nerves,
live nerves, sliced nerves as if someone took a knife to the
nerve endings themselves, not so they are cut dead but so they
are being sliced each minute o f forever, and they don’t go
dead, there’s not half a second o f numbness or paralysis, the
nerves are open and alive and being hit by the air, exposed, and
the knife is cutting into them thread by thread, they’re stringy
and the knife’s pulling them apart, and you got an acute pain
and a loud scream, high decibels, ringing in your ears, a
torture ringing in your ears, and it don’t let you sleep and you
don’t get forgetfulness, your eyes cry blood and you got open
sores, the lips o f your labia get boils, big boils; you got a
vagina with long, deep tears, an ass that rips open with blood
every time you shit, because it’s the penis again, oversized,
pulling out after haying torn its w ay in; and then you will
remember rape; these are the elements o f m em ory, constant,
true, and perpetual pain and otherwise you will forget— we are
a legion o f zombies— because it burns out a piece o f your
brain, it’s the scorched earth policy for the sweetmeat in your
head, the rape recipe, braise, sear, burn bare, there’s a sudden
conflagration on the surface o f your brain, a piece o f one
hemisphere or the other is burned bare, blank, and you lose
w hatever’s there; ju st gone; whatever; so rape’s a tw o-
pronged attack, on your body, in you, on your brain, in you;
on freedom, on memory; you might as well bury yourself in
the backyard, or throw yourself in a trash can, you’re like
some dumb cat or dog that got hit by a car, run over and died;
only they let the shells o f dead girls walk around because hell it
makes no difference to them if what they stick it in is living or
dead; w hat’s left, darling, is fine, according to the formula, a
girl frail and female, a skeleton with a fleshy pudendum, ready
to serve, these girls are ghosts, did you see, did you notice,
where are they, w hy ain’t they here, present, on earth, why
can’t you find them even if you look for them in the light, how
come they don’t know anything or do anything, how come
they ain’t anything, how come they are shaking and flitting
around and apologizing and begging and afraid and drugged
and stupid even if they are smart; how come they are comatose
even when they’re awake? He pushes it in, she pushes it out, a
dead spot in the brain marks the spot, there’s a teeny little
cemetery in her brain, lots o f torched spots, suttee; we bleed
both ends, literal, little strokes every time there’s a rape, time
gone, hours or days or weeks, words gone, self gone, memory
wiped out, severely impaired; I cannot remember— how do
you exist? The skills, the tricks; tie your shoes; wrap ropes
around your heart, or was it your wrists; or was it ankles;
neck; I’d make a list if I could remember; I’d memorize the list
i f someone else would write it down; or I try, I scribble big
letters, confused, misspelled, on the page; or I look at the
words, meaningless, and draw a blank; I make a list,
misspelled words signifying I don’t remember what; or I draw
a picture, I use crayons, o f what? I try to say what I try to
remember; the skills, the tricks, language, yesterday. There
are little rape strokes, erased places in the brain, eruptions o f
blood, explosions, like geysers, it’s flooded, places on the
brain, blood’s acidic, did you ever sit in a pool o f your own
blood, it wears the skin o ff you, chafes, irritates, the skin peels
off; so too in the brain, the skin peels off; I’ve been there, a
poor, dear, quiet thing, naked like a baby, in a river o f blood,
mine, curled up; fetal, as if m y mama took me back. There’s
wounds and you sit in the blood. Why can’t I remember? I am
a stroke victim, a shadow in the night, invisible in the night, a
ghostly thing, in the night, amnesiac, wandering, in the night,
not out to whore, just what’s left, the remains, on the stroll;
taking a walk, pastoral, romantic, an innocent walk, lost in
memories, lost in fog, lost in dark; having forgotten; but I got
muscles packed with memory; hard, thick, solid, from the
positions reenacted, down on m y knees, down on m y back; I
got memories packed in m y bones, because m y brain don’t
make distinctions no more; can’t tell him from him from him;
I have an intuitive dread; o f him and him and him; there’s a
heightened anxiety; I’m a nervous girl, Victorian nerves,
strain, a delicate constitution in the sense that m y brain is frail,
pale; but m y muscles is packed, it’s adrenaline, from fear;
there’s a counterproductive side to creating too much fear, it’s
a meta-amphetamine, it’s meta-speed, it’s meta-coke, it’s
more testosterone than thou, I got a body packed with rage,
you ever seen rage all stored up like a treasure in the body o f a
woman? I don’t need no full capacity brain, as you so
eloquently have insisted; I got sunstrokes in my head, enough
daylight to carry me through any darkness, I am lit up from
inside, a bursting sun; brain light. I am a citizen o f the night,
on a stroll, no dark places keep secrets from me, I am drawn to
them by a secret radiance, the light that emanates from the
human heart, some poor bum, a poor man, poor fucking
drunk somewhere in the shadows hiding his poor drunk heart
in the dark, but I find him, I see the pure light o f his pure heart,
I find him, some asshole, a vagrant, clutching his bottle, and I
like them big, I like them hairy, their skin’s red and bulbous,
all swelled from drinking, they’re mean, they’d kill you for the
fucking bottle they’re clutching to them, sometimes they got
it buried under them, and they’re curled up on cardboard or
newspapers on the street, all secure in the shadows, manly
men, behind garbage cans, hidden in the dark; but the light in
them reaches out to the light in me, my brothers, myself, I
pick on men at least twice my size, I like them with fine
shoulders, wide, real men, I like them six feet or more, I like
them vicious, I pick them big and mean, the danger psyches
me up but what I appreciate is their surprise, which is absolute,
their astonishment, which invigorates me; how easy it is to
make them eat shit; they will always underestimate me,
always, from which I enunciate the political principle, Alw ays
pick on men at least twice your size. This is the value o f
practice as opposed to theory; they’re so easy; so arrogant; so
used to the world always being the w ay they thought it was.
The small ones are harder. The small ones have to le
arn to
fight early and take nothing for granted, the small, w iry ones
you cannot surprise; when I am a master I will take on the
small, w iry ones; or assign them to someone else, maybe
someone who can step on them, a real tall girl who would get
something out o f it by just treating them like bugs; but now I
take the big ones, and I fucking smash their faces in; I kick
them; I hit them; I kick them blind; I like smashing their faces
in with one kick, I like dancing on their chests, their rheumy
old chests, with my toes, big, swinging kicks, and I like one
big one between the legs, for the sake o f form and symbolism,
to pay my respects to content as such, action informed by the
imperatives o f literature. Sometimes they got knives or
bottles, they’re fast, they’re good, but they are fucking drunk
and all sprawled out, and I like smashing the bottles into their
fucking faces and I like taking the knives, for my collection; I
like knives. I find them drunk and lying down and I hurt them
and I run; and I fucking don’t care about fair; discuss fair at the
U . N .; vote on it; from which I enunciate another political
principle, It is obscene for a girl to think about fair. Every girl
needs a man, gets an itch, the nights are long, I’m restless, it’s
not natural for a girl to be alone, without a man; instead o f
locking the windows and locking the doors and waiting for
one to crawl in I go out to find him; not ladylike but selfdetermining, another girl for choice; a girl needs someone big and strong, a macho man, a streetwise, street tough, street
crazy man, a hero o f freedom, a loose man, unattached, a
solitary poet o f drink and darkness, a city prince; I have always
found that a girl needs a boy. These ones are old and mean;
none o f them’s innocent and who cares? I fucking don’t care.
It’s been justified up m y ass. Besides it’s just sport, recreational
training, some ways to get through the night, means and
methods, because I can’t sleep, because if you go to sleep they
will hurt you, one o f them or some o f them or some other o f
them; whoever these ones hurt, I’m taking her place, whoever
she was, they don’t know us apart, cunt is cunt is cunt, I’m
taking her place now, when I choose, I’m standing in for her
now, when it’s good for me; is it good for you? And there’s
one will stand in for me. There’s anonymous women m oving
through the night; I have m y husband here, right in front o f
me, I have a gun to his head, I pull the trigger, it is an
execution, m y right, any time, any place; his life is mine,
because he hurt me; dreadful; a dreadful hurt. I want him
executed so I can be free o f fear; and if there was justice I could
do it any time, any place; I’d have the gun; I’d have the choice;
I’d have the right. I think I have a twin in the night, some girl
standing in for me; who will just smash his fucking head in. I
think one day they will gather, the women, outside where he
lives, I think there will be thousands o f them, I think it will be a
crowd, a mob, a riot, a revolution, and I think they will chant
his name, and I think they will surround his house, and I think
they will block the city streets for blocks, and I think they will
stop traffic, and I think no one will be able to pass in or out and
they w ill stop the police from getting to him to protect him
because they will stretch for miles and someone, an unknown
someone, will kill him, it will be one and it will be all and no
one will ever know who except for her herself, they will smash
him or shoot him or knife him, or fifty will knife him, or a
hundred, but so it’s final, not making a mistake, they will kill
him good and real and quick, and no one will know who,
because it will be all o f them; for me; do this; for me; and when
an indictment is read they will all stand up; for me; including
the ones who heard me scream and including the ones who
weren’t born yet. M y eyes work. I see. It is not a mystery. If
it’s in front o f you you can see how it works itself out. It’s not
prophecy; it’s simple seeing; what is there; now; naked from
the lies. I see the future, a pretty place. The men make a sex
circus, we are the performing animals. There are hoops o f fire,
we are chained in cages, they whip us to make us jum p: high
enough for them to look under. We jum p, we hop, we spread
our legs; they’ll paint us purple underneath; or shave us so we
look like babies; or put brands on us, or chains through us,
underneath; they’ll hurt us, more; more than now; more;
killing w on ’t be enough; rape will be the good old days, when
it was simple, how they just forced us, in private, or how they
just beat us, with fists, in private, or how they put fingers
inside us, when we were too small, underneath; w e’ll be the
dog-and-pony show; they’ll leash us and they’ll manacle us
and they’ll paint us pink and w e’ll have nostalgia for the good
old days when the living was easy before they grabbed us o ff
the streets in vans and gang-raped us and bashed us with
baseball bats, smashing us not looking where, arms, head,
chest, stomach, legs, and filmed it, and dumped us, some o f us
lived, some o f us died, or before they set dogs on us to fuck us,
and filmed it, or before they cut us open, to ejaculate on us,
and filmed it, or before they started urinating on us, using us
like common toilets, to film it; but I don’t expect to be listened
to or believed, certainly even the simplest things o f an already
distinguished life cannot be believed, I couldn’t say anything
simple in the whole course o f m y actual life and have there be
belief; as if justice for me, from him to me, could count; but I
been through that; m y grievances on that score are between
the lines, at least there, always read the white space; I’m tired
from it and I’m sad; Walt could say blah blah blah this will
come and this will come and this will be and he was venerated
for dreaming, as i f his dreams was true dreams o f a true future;
m y nightmares are true dreams o f a true future. I’m not alone;
though I can’t find them; in the dark raped girls wander;
smashing drunks; sometimes someone sets one on fire; I see
the flames; I smell the carcass; the raped have stopped being
kind, generally speaking, though it’s still a secret. I personally
have done the following. I have blown up several rape
emporiums. I don’t have bombs or explosives but I cannot be
stopped. I steal a car; I back it into the rape emporium when it’s
deserted; I make a fuse to the gas tank; I light the fuse; the
whole thing blows; it’s simple, if a bit extravagant. Any man
will follow any feminine looking thing down any dark alley;
I’ve always wanted to see a man beaten to a shit bloody pulp
with a high-heeled shoe stuffed up his mouth, sort o f the pig
with the apple; it would be good to put him on a serving plate
but yo u ’d need good silver. Y o
u ’re the piece o f ass; he’s
invulnerable, o f course; it’s his right, to come after you; so if
he follow s you and you have the urge to smash him to death
he’s asked for it, hasn’t he? I mean, he actually did ask for it.
The arm y o f raped ghosts got together and we marched, we
marched, we marched in Tim es Square and the Tenderloin
and Soho; we marched; everyw here there’s neon w e’ve
marched; we visit the slave auctions; we have the names o f the
pimps, addresses, photos, telephone numbers, social security
numbers; I plaster their neighborhoods with pictures o f them;
I say they are pimps who slaughter wom en for fun and money;
I say he’s at your P . T . A ., he’s with your children; I pursue
him; the army o f raped ghosts stays on his tail; we drive him
out. They hide; they run. One day the women will burn down
Tim es Square; I’ve seen it in m y mind; I know; it’s in flames.
The women will come out o f their houses from all over and
they will riot and they will burn it down, raze it to the ground,
it will be bare cement; and we will execute the pimps. N o
woman will ever be hurt there again; ever; again; it is a simple
fact. I threw blood all over their weaponry; their whips; their
chains; their spiked dildos; their leashes; I have buckets o f
blood, nurses give it to me, raped nurses; and I cover
everything, the slave clothes, the bikinis, the nighties, the
garter belts, and the things they tie you down with and the
things they stick up you and the things they hurt you with,
nipple clips and piercing things; I drench them in blood; I
make them blood-soaked, as is a w om an’s life; I think over
time I will engage in a new art, painting their world blood red
as they have painted mine; simple self-expression, with a
political leaning but neither right nor left per se, the anti-rape
series it will be called, with real life as the canvas; and I will try
to make the implicit explicit; a poet said, make the implicit
explicit; a political theorist said, make the implicit explicit; the
blood o f women is implicit in the weaponry; I will take the
Mercy Page 43
