and now

THE RED-SKINNED CORPSE OF SINCERITY

Those mute white mounds of Jews: they were sincere. And to the right nose, what is not a corpse? To a rat, what is not food? rat tat General weathering plays some part, I said—wind, rain, thaw, freeze, a mean muttering mouth like the flow of water in that stream: each wears a little of the world out; corpses by the carload, by the ditchful, fieldful, hill high, death like a steady patient drip or the dogged footstep of the pilgrim: rat tat they reduce us; executioners working anonymously away like ants about their beelike business, tat similes sold as slaves, verbs rusting like old cars, a yearlong winter of shit like sleet from an asshole of ice, hail and shame storms: they smooth us; they plane us down a scream of sand in a howl of air, the repeated rub of erasers, picked-at skin scabs, trouser shine, crotch itch, fondle bruise, or that coy batting of the eye which wearies what it sees: rat tat tat tat they shave us; the grip of the cigar in the same cold corner of the mouth may cause cancer, tat the lonely lodger in his rented room (ah! portrait of millstream in moonlight, tat summer-stuck drawer, tat crumbs from a store-bought cookie, tat imprint of despair on the unmade bed, tat stained satin shade, rat tat sock soaked with cum) ah! may become murderous, so look out for a dry spell rather longer than Egypt’s, for fire, for flood (it’s a routine of history)—and I remember those darkened days, when rivers ran with blood like veins (I remember, ole Mose), those frogs and centipedes and snakes, the locusts and chiggers and flies, cheeseless holes defined by rhino rinds, O those politicos and their speeches as wormy as pork, boils on the balls of the eyes—so look out, because UNCLEAN CUNTS MENACE KOSHER COCKS (we know how [we know] O), with their sloughs of despond, a row of ruts like the rounds of a record, O with a malaise of malarkey, with a plague of poets, tat “din of desire,” one wrote, what rot, rat tat tat till, seasoned by beatings, prepared by starvation and disease, bodies were produced O by the board root, uniformly uniformless, with shriveled members, darkened memories, cardboard hearts and sunken chests, large eyes, thin limbs, bald heads the lice have left, idle open mouths the wind will blow rain in ah! so that they are now neatly the same size, same age, same sex (and lighter, too, by the weight of the soul), tat corpses stacked like cordwood

to marry?

but is it really better?

burning is such a bother