her by me, but I wake up and it’s hollow, m y life’s hollow, I
got an em pty life, I’m alive and it’s empty, she’s gone, I raise
m yself up on m y elbow and I look, I keep looking, there’s a
desolation beyond the burdens o f history, a sadness deeper
than any shame. I’ll take the physical pain, Lord, I deserve it,
double it, triple it, make it more, but bring her back, don’t let
him hurt her, don’t make her gone. I look, I keep looking, I
keep expecting her, that she will be there if I look hard enough
or God will hear me and the boy will walk through the door
saying he ju st walked her and I pray to just let him bring her
back, ju st let him walk in the door; ju st this; days could go by
and I w ouldn’t know ; he’ll be innocent in m y eyes, I swear. I
hallucinate her and I think she’s with me and I reach out and
she’s not real and then I fall back into the deep blackness and
when I wake up I look for her, I wait for her; I’m waiting for
her now. M y throat’s like some small animal nearly killed,
maimed for religious slaughter, a small, nearly killed beast, a
poor warm-blooded thing hurt by some ritual but I never
heard o f the religion, there’s deep sacrifice, deep pain. I can’t
move because the poor thing’d shake near to torture; it’s got to
stay still, the maimed thing. I couldn’t shout and I couldn’t cry
and I couldn’t whisper or moan or call her name, in sighs, I
couldn’t whisper to m yself in sighs. I couldn’t swallow or
breathe. I sat still in m y own shit for some long time, many,
many days, some months o f days, and I rocked, I rocked back
and forth on m y heels, I rocked and I held m yself in m y arms, I
didn’t move more than to rock and I didn’t wash and I didn’t
say nothing. I swallowed down some water as I could stand it,
I breathed when I could, not too much, not too soon, not too
hard. If he put semen on me it’s still there, I wear it, whatever
he did, if he did it I carry it whatever it is, I don’t know, I w on’t
ever know, whatever he did stays done, anything he tore stays
torn, anything he took stays gone. I look for her; I scan the
walls; I stare; I see; I know; I will make m yself into a weapon; I
will turn m yself into a new kind o f death, for them; I got a new
revolutionary love filling my heart; the real passion; the real
thing. Che didn’t know nothing, he was ruling class. Huey killed
a girl, a young prostitute, seventeen; he was pimping but she
wasn’t one o f his. He was cruising, slow, in a car. Baby, she
called out, baby, oh babe. He shot her;
no one calls me baby.
She
said baby; he said cunt. Some o f them whisper, a term o f
endearment; some o f them shout. There’s gestures more
eloquent than words. She said something, he said something,
she died. Sister child, lost heart, poor girl, I’ll avenge you, sister
o f m y heart. Did it hurt or was death the easy part? I don’t know
what m y one did, except for taking her; but it don’t matter,
really, does it? N ot what; nor why; nor who; nor how.
T E N
April 30, 1974
(Age 27)
Ma. Ssa. Da. Ma. Ssa. Da. Ma. Ssa. Da. Hear m y heart beat.
Massada. I was born there and I died there. There was time;
seventy years. The Je w s were there, the last ones, the last free
ones, seventy years. The zealots, they were called; m y folks,
m y tribe; how I love them in m y heart. N ever give in. N ever
surrender. Slavery is obscene. Die first. B y your ow n hand; if
that’s what it takes; rather than be conquered; die free. N o
shame for the women, they used to say; conquered women;
shame. Massada. I used to see this picture in m y mind, a
wom an on a rock. I wrote about her all the time. Every time I
tried to write a story I wrote there is a woman on a rock, even
in the eighth grade, there’s a woman, a strong woman, a fierce
wom an, on a rock. I didn’t know what happened in the story. I
couldn’t think o f a plot. I just saw her. She was proud. She was
strong. She was wild by our standards or so it seemed, as if
there was no other word; but she didn’t seem wild; because she
was calm; upright; with square shoulders, muscled; her eyes
were big and fearless and looked straight ahead; not like
wom en today, looking down. She was ancient, from an old
time, simple and stark, dirty and dark, austere, a proud,
unconquerable wom an on a rock. The rock towers. The rock
is barren; nothing grow s, nothing erodes, nothing changes; it
is hard and old and massive. The rock is vast. The rock is
majestic, high and bare and alone; so alone the sun nearly
weeps for it; isolated from man and God; unbreachable; a
towering wall o f bare rock, alone in a desert where the sun
makes the sand bleed. The sun is hot, pure, unmediated by
clouds or sky, a white sun; blinding white; no yellow; there’s a
naked rock under a steaming, naked sun, surrounded by
molten, naked sand. It’s a rock made to outlast the desert, a
bare and brazen rock; and the Dead Sea spreads out near it,
below it, touching the edge o f the desert that touches the edge
o f the rock. Dead rock; dead water; a hard land; for a hard
people; God kept killing us, o f course, to make us hard
enough; genocide and slavery and rape were paternal kindnesses designed to build character, to rip pity out o f you, to destroy sentimentality, your heart will be as barren as this rock
when I’m done with you, He said; stern Father, a nasty
Daddy, He made history an incest on His children, slow,
continuous, generation after generation, a sadistic pedagogy,
love and pain, what recourse does a child have? He loves you
with pain, by inflicting it on you, a slow, ardent lover, and you
love back with suffering because you are helpless and human,
an imprisoned child o f Him caged in the world o f His making;
it’s a worshipful response, filled with awe and fear and dread,
bewildered, w hy me, w hy now, w hy this, w hy aren’t Y ou
merciful, w hy aren’t Y ou kind; and because it’s all there is, this
love o f His, it’s the only love He made, the only love He lets us
know, ignorant children shut up in D addy’s house, we yearn
for Him and adore Him and wait for Him, awake, afraid,
shivering; we submit to Him, part fear, part infatuation,
helpless against Him, and we thank Him for the punishment
and the pain and say how it shows He loves us, we say Daddy,
Daddy, please, begging Him to stop but He takes it as
seduction, it eggs Him on, He sticks it in; please, Daddy. He
didn’t rest on the seventh day but He didn’t write it down
either, He made love, annihilation is how I will love them.
Y ou might say He had this thought. It was outside the plan.
The six days were the plan. On the seventh He stretched