ONCE I PERAMBULATED CONSIGNED TO DEFEAT

290. ONCE I PERAMBULATED CONSIGNED TO DEFEAT (nyc, 1967):

There actually was a day when the streets were treacherous when ice rolled down the sides of that Winter's sledge hammer - a frozen Hudson clogged with huge slabs of ice rolling and resounding piece by piece into the lower bowels of the churning harbor - when trucks lined up at the water's edge and dockhands threw cargo forward and aft loading whatever they could into packeted jumbles of fleet and indy - little guys driving little trucks and big guys with bigger trucks - and the streets daily aflame with protest and a certain form of violence which took the workday just to the edge of things and then pulled it back : construction crews taunting anti-Vietnam protesters waving placards and shouting in response fists occasionally flying and young-faced boys in line to be sent off to their other dominion of following orders learning rules firing weapons and killing or being killed and great maps of napalm and flame and the horrid sorties of mega-bombs showed up on every newscast along with the rolls of the dead and the maimed and wounded and that was what was left of the vast American jumble - a war-state creeping towards its own new totalitarianism - claiming its own patrons by murdering its own citizenry in the ostensible service of a false Freedom and a wish for gold - lucre on top and huge mechanical corporations underneath trying to fabricate market-share expand the borders of trade and forcibly recruit the world for inclusion in its own lousy dominion and it had its tentacles everywhere and everywhere it was they tried to reach and the story I tell here is not unlike a thousand other stories of another time and another place past but yet recent and living on yet in the fevered leftover minds of all those who lived through it though hard to get across to the naive denizens of today's far-paler corridors : 'They'd finally caught up to me one day in late '67 and away I was waltzed in handcuffs to the cheap remnants of the Whitehall Induction Station along lower Broadway to be grilled as a common criminal for the mischievous infraction of non-registration for the draft or circumventing a military edict or running from death and the killing of others or whatever phrases they were using in those pathetic days of yore (it's different now - people sign up willingly for all this piffle to kill and maim and get generous benefits for the rest of their days and ain't that a lot of crap : socialist statist pig-living ways of going about one's own enslavement but we pay for it all and they live high on a hog for the rest of their days having joined as an employer-of-last-resort the Military to engage) to cover their own asses and I laughed in their faces and told them to drop dead and said I'd already fucked all their daughters and what of that ! and all it did was anger them more I got roughed up a bit pushed around and rumpled but survived 2 days in a common hole getting fed whatever slop they could induce me to eat and then they bussed me off again to Newark NJ oh fair fucking oasis of slime and grim petty bullshit creep-ass trolley town of death and mayhem and maker of nothing and they let me off there to for further questioning and then the shrink the ever-present shrink who arrived in the room as I sat there and asked to me my very own questions from a list all about what was wrong with my why and how and what did I expect and how they could if they chose just send me off tomorrow morning to some deep jungle blood pit to be never heard from again and was that what I wanted ? well was it ? and I responded saying what if it was anyway it was none of their business I could get there myself if I'd a mind because tomorrow morning as I could see it was way too long to wait I wanted to maim and kill right NOW get started immediately don't you see and the first thing I'd do when I learned to kill was to turn the weapon on the very person who'd just taught me to use it and how would YOU like that now thunderhead Dr. Fucking Demento how would you - and it went like this a long time papers and checkmarks and things written down and scribbled and one or two other Dr. types ambled in and took part and before I knew it it was all over I was gone free'd taken off the chopping block they said I was demented needed help should be put away here's a bus ticket home can you get to the station all right yourself or should we get you a ride and I said 'No No No ! please I'll go myself skipping wistfully into your dead-eye'd space' and it was winter it was a cold November and they threw me out and said they'd be contacting my parents (believe you that!) and having me put away blah blah fucking military bullshit blah and I believed none of it but was more than willing right then to blow that entire place right up AND down to the ground too - military cockmouth dickwash bastards that they were - and to this day I can't believe that people live like that and profess such bullshit my country 'tis of thee and all that : taking deep breaths for fucking non-existent Liberty brain-washed master class of school and home and hearth televised fiddle-faddle idiotic crap washing over in waves the enfeebled and captured minds of tens of thousands mannered mindless stupid dumbfucks tripping over themselves willingly backwards into their own trash and praising that too ! and to this day every maddening recruitment shed I see every military asshole poster I see every time a crooked mouth with a crooked voice proclaims the job of 'Defending Liberty' I still and again fucking croak and puke once over and once over again!'
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How distant the day when one had to relate in that manner the uncertain fierceness everyone was living ? really not that distant at all.