John Halladay
A Fourth Fragment
and I'll tell you something more.. .
(seven lines missing)
..and then it was easier.
I overcame the horror
of carnality. Don't laugh,
it gives me the thing I've always longed for:
time for things other than lust.
God, how we waste our thoughts
on lumps and rumps and sags and mounds
and everything else that bumps along
with that absurdity:
reproduction.
(four lines missing)
.. . climbing up her like she was a mountain
and I was a mountain goat.
(indecipherable)
... she was the one with the beard.
Ha!Ha!Ha!
Put that in one of your texts.
I explained it and she
pretended to laugh again,
I am forward thinking,
I explain all my jokes, frequently.
(rnanuscript torn)
or ten minutes for this one, an hour's rest
then a ten minute more of something not like rest,
if one's mind is in exercise for one's genitals
then one has a ballock mind.
Else I'd ration her.
She'd be ready in the morning
and twice in the evening, whether I was ready or not.
Sometimes it was depressing.
She worked hard enough,
or was worked hard enough
if you get my joke,
The thing's a nothing to women, I know,
a little pleasurable friction (translation?) for them.
Though they seem stoical,
inside they writhe.
(ten lines indecipherable)
but, as I said, I've given it up,
such business, in exchange for commerce.
Fortunately, my wife is frigid.
I'm all right and she has started whistling.
She is kinder to the slaves.
Page(s) 35
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