the boy walks with his muddy feet across my soul talking about recitals, virtuosi, conductors, the lesser known novels of Dostojevsky; talking about how he corrected a waitress, a hasher who didn't know that French dressing was composed of so and so; he gabbles about the Arts until I hate the Arts, and there is nothing cleaner than getting back to a bar or back to the track and watching them run, watching things go without this clamor and chatter, talk, talk, talk, the small mouth going, the eyes blinking, a boyt, a child, sick with the Arts, grabbing at it like the skirt of a mother, and I wonder how many tens of thousands there are like him across the land on rainy nights on sunny mornings on evenings meant for peace in concert halls in cafes at poetry recitals talking, soiling, arguing.

it's like a pig going to bed with a good woman and you don't want the woman any more.

when God created love He didn't hepl most

when God created dogs He didn't help dogs

when God created plants that was average

when God created hate we had a standard utility

when God created me He created me

when God created the monkey He was asleep

when God created the giraffe He was drunk

when God created narcotics He was high

and when He created suicide He was low

when He created you lying in bed

He knew He was doing

He was drunk and He was high

and He created the mountains and the sea and fire

at the same time

He made some mistakes

but when He created you lying in bed

He came all over His Blessed Universe.

the motion of the human heart;

strangled over Missouri;

sheathed in hot wax in Boston;

burned like a potato in Norfolk;

lost in the Allegheny Mountains;

found again in a 4-poster mahogany bed

in New Orleans;

drowned and stirred with pinto beans

in El Paso;

hung on a cross like a drunken dog

in Denver;

cut in half and toasted in

Kalamazoo;

found cancerous on a fishing boat

off the coast of Mexico;

tricked and caged at Daytona Beach;

kicked by a nursery maid

in a green and white ghingham dress,

waiting table at a North Carolina

bus stop;

rubbed in olive oil and goat

piss

by a chess-playing hooker in the East Village;

painted red, white, and blue

by an act of Congress;

torpedoed by a dyed blonde

with the biggest ass in Kansas;

gutted and gored by a woman

with the soul of a bull

in East Lansing;

petrified by a girl with tiny fingers,

she had one tooth missing,

upper front, and pumped gas

in Mesa;

the motion of the human heart goes on

and on

and on and on

for a while.