The Land of Fuck by Erica Jong

The land of fuck
is not for sale.

Caught between
the muslin curtains
of the nursery
and the red damask
of the whorehouse,
the gambling den,
the mafia chieftans'
restaurant
(in whose backroom the big men
with big bellies,
big guns,
and little dicks
gamble lives
away
on a flipped card
or a throw
of bones)-

The land of fuck
is not for sale.

You can steal it
if you dare.

In a dream
you can ascend
to the special room
above the shadowy El
where, amid the rattling trains
carrying bug-eyed
exhibitionists
and drooling
adolescent boys
with perpeptual
hard-ons,
the students of Fuck
go to spill their lives away
and the semen pools
under their luminous chairs.

The Land of Fuck
is not for sale
anymore than
the sea is,
and it smells the same.

Ocean wreckage
at low tide: salt and rot
and sea meat left in the sun
too long,
sweet slime
between epochs of bone
and dust.
The Land of Fuck
is not for sale -
which does not mean
it has no price.

The tax
is tranquility, calm,
and the stillness of life.

The Land of Fuck
has a price.