Well, I’d be flenched of my office friends if I could choose. Let’s draw up a true Bill, they say, circling me, pointing their pens. O he’s true blue, is Bill: he likes inditements. Then each mouth squats. They leave their puns in piles: sniff, salute, and go. My colleagues. Their way I’d be flenched of me.

Since the shit my bowels have moved through for more than fifty years has been flushed daily and forgotten, why not the rest: Mad Meg, mother, Father, Marty, me, the dirty Jews, the dirtier Nazis, Susu, Lou, Culp, Planmantee . . . ? I have tried hard not to bear malice. Haven’t I? Every day, like lifting weights, haven’t I worked out, weakening myself, becoming a fish-and-lily Christian in all but belief, and unable to bear false witness or a grudge, to carry on a feud or hurl an insult, with mercy’s milk, like water, running through my veins? Haven’t I labored loyally to be unable . . . to be limp and languishing? to forgive, forget, let live, and so forth? ooooooooooh not to bear malice for all I’ve been through, for all I’ve done to others, for every moment of my life I’ve not enjoyed—ooooooooooh yet I do. When is the rage I contain going to find its utterance? Haw. Are these sheets to be my MEIN KAMPF? Haw haw, indeed. Bear malice! The malice I bear has borne me to my knees. I have resentment to spare for a flood; my loose change would millionaire most men.

Now, in fact, I molest myself, don’t I? Ah! I stand in my own way. I step on my own toes. I threaten, and it’s I who mugs me. I grip my throat, don’t I? I crush my chest. Like a cobra, I spit in my own eyes. Hate has given force and purpose to my life. I’ve studied it. It’s studied me. Love, when I’ve allowed it—no, no, no—when it’s been permitted me, has nearly destroyed it . . . with visions, like a slut, of what might be. I’m just an infant’s prick it has

The flag my kids designed and carried

around the block before I burned it

and their bottoms. The secret of the

swastika, they said tough they didn’t

know the meaning of the number

sixty-nine.

amused itself by teaching wobbly standups. As long as you sold knickknacks you would suckle me, Lou, my daughter of the Five & Dime; but as a student, hoity-toity, you fucked like a lady; you were active as the bedclothes, sensuous as Vaseline; ah, what blindness had I inflicted on myself not to see your future treachery? Where the willow loops, the sky is still lazy. I dream of your body, blue as a star. With that light in me, I think foolishly, I’d be a heaven, and close in my arms whole towns while sleeping. My heart leaps as uselessly as these sentiments do, and though there’s a war in me, nothing remains to be seen, everything has been decided, including the arrival of my death, for my future’s simply what, tomorrow, I shall think about my past.