if you really want the truth
i'm almost none
of the things i claim to be except perhaps
intermittently
and i don't love you i don't
or you
or even you
and long before i was stealing from other poets
i was already in training at the age
of sixteen as
an usher at the old cabarrus theatre
where i schemed with
the girl in the ticket booth to resell some of the matinee
tickets splitting the proceeds
fifty fifty
and even before that when i was fourteen forging checks on my mother's account
thinking i was so clever she would never miss it
not realizing
there would be a record of the withdrawals even if
i put the money back but she
always forgave me
even the night my father died and i crept into her bed weeping
but hard and naked again
as a child crying i'm alive mama alive
yet more than the thefts and deception the disillusionment
and dismay they carried with them
there was always the ego
and where that came from i don't know
but it's time you learned i don't give a ratfuck for your kids
or have the slightest respect
for your dear old dad no not yours hers
the one who's still
alive yes him and i have to tell you i hated it when you compared me
to him as if i were some kind of surrogate
which i'm not goddamit nor ever was unless he would
sneak in at night and pull
your little cotton panties down and kiss you there
with a hand over
your mouth so not to wake your sister
but don't think i wouldn't add her to the list too
for what's age
got to do with it
i went after bootie's sisters didn't i both
of them and the younger
one i didn't get till she was sixty and so fucked up
with dementia she couldn't resist but it was
worth the wait
pulling off her depends
and eating her through the piss and mud daubs of shit
and when i pray to god to punish
me i know he knows i'm just trying to con him again but it's a game
we can play because we're both masters at it
and there is no
mendacity between us mendacity the goddamn word excuse me god
that tom williams made famous
in cat on a hot tin roof as if
he himself had any regard for the truth the lying
cocksucker
whom i actually met once
in the old el quixote bar at the chelsea
and i had to tell him
with all the conviction only a southerner can muster —
mr. williams your work has meant
so much to me over the years
and i just wanted to say that i would never
have dared write a play without
your streetcar there to guide me and give me the courage
to which he replied thank yew
i do not date writers but if you have a young actor friend
who might be interested
i have two tickets
to the vival of my garden district tonight —
which i'm recounting now only to show
how williams a more conniving southerner than i will ever be
had reached
a certain peace with himself by then but what
the hell good was it for
two years later he would be dead
and indeed
what the hell use is any of it the money the sex the glory
and i tell you this the only satisfaction
i've had in this life
is during those moments alone
when i've gone say a couple days without bathing
and i can run my fingers
down between my thighs and bring them
up to my nose
inhaling the acrid sweet and slick smell of the truest part of me
knowing no matter who i swore had laid claim
to my heart
it was a lie
i never trusted anyone but myself
and all you have to decide is who is it telling you this
the one you thought
was really real
or the other his sainted candyass double who never stole anything from anyone
not even a ballpoint
or was ever any kind of a writer at all
but loved you more than you will ever know
