The Western Lands Read Free Page A

or gone, your Ren and your Ka walked out in disgust long ago. "The beastliness of Maugham is beyond endurance, I'm gettin out of here, me." It takes a good strong Ka to keep the boys in line.
    "Now look, Ren Sekem Khu." He whips out a straight razor that glows white-hot like a slice of light. "You may jet off to the space station but your wings is going to stay right here."
    That's the way it is with these accursed poets. They go from adolescence to old age without transition. The kid died in a Boulder cemetery. He was there to talk for Joe.
    "Something I been waiting to say for a long time, Mister Kim."

    August 16, 1984, Thursday
    The sheer nightmare horror of my position, of all human positions, waiting for some lunatics or conspirators going to ride out on the blast like a surfboard to explode the atoms we are all made of. A lucky survivor, blind, stumbling about in my ruined house, hungry mewling cats underfoot. How about that, Kim? Kill your dogs and cats. Repeat. Kill your dogs and cats. The boiled eggs were just right. Debonair heartless Kim striking histrionic poses on the buckling deck of a doomed planet . . . reflecting a flawed unbearable boy image in an empty mirror. Radiant Kim, the fearless ostrich, escape child of a frightened old man. Anybody isn't frightened now simply lacks imagination. Is there any escape? Of course. A miracle. Leave the details to Joe.

    An old man in a rented house with his cat, Ruski. So he looks about in quiet desperation for an escape route. That's Thoreau, I think, wasn't he the one drowned himself in Waiden Pond with a dead loon around his neck? Pick a card . . . any card. . . .
    So he writes about desperately for an escape route. Such openings are only there in times of chaos when the cry goes up, "Every man for himself!"
    "Chacun pour soi!"
    "Sauve qui peut!"
    If you're going to slip in somewhere and save your skin it has to be when the ship is sinking, a country falling apart, a time when nobody knows who is who and you can pass yourself off as anybody .
    The Weimar Republic. Cocaine is cheaper than food. Starving boys— die wandervögel , the migrating birds—flock to Berlin to sell themselves for a meal. The hero prances out in drag singing, "Einer Mann, einer Mann, einer RICHTIGER Mann!"
    Easy to pick up a pair of shoes in the Weimar Republic. Jeder Mann sein eigener Futbol. (Every man his own football.) They deserved to lose for such vapid nonsense. The Lesbians had a marching song: Wir brauchen keiner Männer mehr . (We don't need men anymore.) And the gays tripped along to: Wir sind anders von den Andern / Die nur im Gleichschritt der Moral geleibt haben . (We are different from the others / Who have only loved in the same step of morality.)
    Three hundred gay bars, bread riots and street fighting and hunger . . . every man his own football.
    SA marchiert .  . . .
    Master Levy, when asked for the price of a flop by one of the Wanderbursche who came from all over Germany to Berlin— some queen's jissom may be the first food they have had in three days—so Levy says, "Well, I can't give you any money. But I will give you good advice. Over there under that railroad there is a particularly cold wind."
    He denies the story. He was a strong man, reminded me of Korzybski. Rather heavy, with big arms and a strong voice. At times the strong must commit acts of incredible cruelty to stoke their strength. One sultan used to cut the arm off whoever helped him into the saddle. You have to be strong to live with such acts, very strong. I do not aspire to such strength. Obviously such strength is forced upon the recipient slowly, a bit at a time . . . the door closes behind him, only one door open. A man's arm. Slice . . . he spurs his horse before the blood spurts out. . . .

    At the Russian front, morphine is the most precious commodity, a warm, comfortable blanket against the cold that gets down inside you so finally you don't shiver anymore because there is no place to shiver to.