I am aged. I am aged. I am gross. I am full of soup and hot with fever. I know no name except the one you call me. And no refrain except that which we now call. The story must be told.

The story must be told.

We are each of us wet with the water of our maker,

blown by the gusts he does produce

roaring from a colon of ill health,

endure, get slick with yon juices and bow before a psalm of ringing syllables

and disgusting vowels.

Ooh, our elders are trophies of the decades we prefer forgotten.

Their hanging jowls, their growths and drippings, their

crusty undershirts and stained stretched panties, are standards of our lives, penance we salute,

and flags we leave out in the rain to grow moist and heavy on their stories steam in urine. An elder is forgotten once

every two seconds, so by now we have forgotten these names, Gerald, Gladys, Glenn and Gertrude,

Susan, Sneezy, Salty Jeff and Surly Hank.

Tip their gravestones and make a rubbing of their odes,

cause no one else will be rubbing their rancid flesh no more.

Good riddance.

Oh, thank you, Sister Clisset, for such fine words.

Sister Callista, stay with me at this pulpit.

I will absorb you with mine eyes and sniff at you with my chapped nostrils.

Oh, yes, I know you.

I remember the way you were born all gooey and clad in,

but uterine tissue swallowed about ye like wet noodles.

...