Shutting up like pot-bellied mice-men

there comes a time when all of us must shut the fuck up,
and quiver quietly like mice
with no way out.

roll the dice
and hope for the slightest possible agony
and shame.

Do this: roll about and pray in
your helpless,
narcissist way.
sit in the pew and
freely breathe your stink
and the stink of things like
God and Government
and whatever produces
the horrors of television.
All the minor humiliations you
have suffered,
you must embrace and appreciate,
because they are as nothing to the
suffering of the children
of the Congo, or the Sudan, or Rwanda,
or Cambodia, or Vietnam,
or Guatemala, or Iraq,
or the poorer sections of
America and Europe.

We must all pray,
or else we should
all shit
upon ourselves,
quite seriously,
at some crucial point, my friend...
out of need, justice, or humility,
out of brotherhood with the,
well, the lesser.
in personal moments we must do it
because we are all family.
The key is to approach this
droning, mindless ritual
or this self-soiling
seraphic state with some degree
of humanity or humanness,
as if heated by the burn of our essential spark.
That is to say, we must
look forward to whatever
life brings us with a
cunning, secretive lust
for the profits that
can be won from the situation,
and a shrewd eye
for the weaknesses of
our companions.