I used to like to butcher texts pretty bad so it wasn't a real dastardly thing to do to wrap me up in a sheet and shut me up in a trunk and surrender me to the Turks the way Bill did that hot fullmoon night that we swooned with each other next to the river hard by the school we attended.
I got mad, still and all, and in spite I upset the Turks' notions of autodidacticism by proving that though I had learned all I knew by myself, I was cruel, snide and prudish. The Turks, and by power of suggestion all Turks, fell into a contemplative stupor from which they recovered only in the next phase of their civilization, upon which by marrow-deep reflex they showered me with a sticky stuff that coated my pores so my skin couldn't breathe anymore and I froze up all stiff-jointed, mad, and the Turks got behind their munitions and begged me for forgiveness for everything they'd done to me so far, and I offered it to them gaily and fast on the condition they take care to find some butane or what-not and clean my skin of the sticky stuff, which turned out to be the actual condensed blood of all of their great Turkish prophets (which naturally upset them some too, and they recounted at length the story of their prophets, which turned out to be quite unusual).
Here is the text of my statement to these Turks the next day, in which I explain where I came from. It shows that though of poor stock, I am kind, martial and pithy (a fact the Turks found simple to celebrate):
Is aught the beam of sturgeons' clip
on sea, that nape of dripping lamb--
or mirth the cantilever's sashay
creaming sham pâté, aghast?
That was nothing! Here is the text of my statement to the Turks the week after, as many of us were traversing the Caspian Sea in search of sellable notions:
Here is the vast
uproarious slat
in greed--
mead, our sole bond
Perhaps, one of them said, you are needing a whiff of the stridency of the Turkish choirs which stipple Constantinople with boy-charm. Perhaps that would arch your contrition and limber your strut. Here is part of the text I spoke in response, though the paper for the whole would swallow ten North Americas:
Gunning to valleys succinctly lined on the charts of the greatest of latter-day wanderers
I and you and the host of fungi and one-celled attached assist the general dimple we've sunk in the blue
This is not less than the growth on a brother's shoulder
This is not less than the cursive of somebody's first grader damning a kitchen
This is tremendous!
How many traders would smile?
I accepted, there on the sea, preferring the voice of a boy to that of a fish any old day, and we changed our course (laden as we were with a nation's wealth of golden teacups due in Kentucky) towards Constantinople, where indeed there were many fine choirs with many fine boys and the rest is contained in the annals I laid down through my scribes (I illiterate). They are called Dear Bill after the youth who abandoned me to the Turks so long before they and I learned to speak in distinct but unruly patterns across the cultural gulfs that kept us forever apart.