Mured Up In the Wall of Wisdom Politics is the main reason behind everything which is why the Salivating Army dares to call this chicken-wire cage a shelter and these plastic mats beds that they got for free when Little Angels Day Scare went bankrupt and why they won't put up any showers just a cold-water sink and commode because the woman that owns Don's Discount Drugs made a speech before the County Commissioners that if you add on showers your undesirables will start drifting in from all over not only the ones in need but assholes that will take baths just to spite the incumbent Sheriff and the resident Hanging Judge who abhor clean bums even worse than dirty ones so what you get if you join the army now is used GI Nikes and Calvin Kleins to cover your scodey body and surplus commodity grits and powdered milk and scrambled eggs poured from a carton which you have to sop up and bolt down before they clear the table for the Major's reveille sermon which is usually about how even the worst of us can lift ourselves up by our Nike- straps and get out and do something useful like fold ads for the Tribune or like our lady Vietnamese instructor from UNC said last week keep a journal or write poems that will let the heartless middle class perceive what they are wasting by turning their backs on all this talent which could maybe even include a Capote or a Richard Wright but not the likes of me that she won't let come to her seminary any more because all he wants to do is submit 500 wd essays about jacking off or like the time he found a dead weirdo sitting in the urinal of the first-floor men's room at the courthouse and drank what was left of the delecti's Thunderbird before he prised open the unfortunate's jaws and fucked him in the throat which was my symbolic way of writing that yes we street folk do entertain thoughts of sex just like the normal people in the world and like I told the professor in a PS hey I realize this is a piss-poor story but if I could maybe enroll in a regular class at the university and take my rightful place amid all that sweet pussy I might could learn to be more sociable and not have to forever be doing everything for myself like Alexander in his tent or Montaigne in his tower or Saint Theresa in her wild lament James Lineberger |