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a hip pain, a swollen gum, eyes that stick dry
at night, an ingrown toenail, a skin blemish

precancerous, I tell you, I feel like shoot,
I feel like wasted space: I mean I feel as

out of place as if Mary Scots had feared getting
salmonella from the chopping block: I feel

like deeply undecided old men, drawn backward
more than they can push forward, their

lightning fork-shorn, their little slug soft as
a snail, patches of decay festering in their

groins: I feel approximately like that: also,
I don’t feel good: instead of a young squirt

you have a little bulging blubber: I need
help: but you can bet a circumloca(cu)tion

around your asshole (round trip, rim trip) that
when the dogooders get out there saving lives

(don’t eat, don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t sit
around) they’re fooling themselves out of

knowing that too many live already (so
hard to accept) and too many live too long

(Medicare, Medicaid): we save only to drown
in ourselves: not to rush out to save is to

admit the truth: I can’t wait for somebody to
save me: when I was ten about I was called up

to the altar of the Pentecostal Fire-Baptized
Holiness Church to be saved and later as I

sat on a bench recovering, an old woman asked
carefully and earnestly if I was saved: hell,

yes, I think: saved from all that froth: no
bit of foolishness people will not take

seriously and the more removed from probability
the less likely it need ever be tested by

reality, so the more deliciously constant, the
purer: I never can quite get over this

propensity, the obviously true forsaken in
search of a delusion in a corny grotto: the

thing for which there is no evidence shines
what only deity knows: that light can intercede

with the worst real circumstance: the people
while foolish are no fools: they go for the

good stuff where it’s best obtained, and
cheapest: the gism never fails that is beyond

this world, can’t be analyzed into failure:
the fault that can’t be mended is no fault:

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