Selling what you had to give,
Your hands became claws
In the city of emphysema.
Selling what you think you are,
The worse it gets, the better you feel.
Now you fight fear
With more fear.
You protect yourself
With something frightening.
You become a thing among things,
Whose anger can shatter the world.
Bleeding from one end or the other,
A frightened public wants to know
If your hatred is real.
You found the right words somehow,
And the words formed another lie.
Now I am your customer.
Shuffling your papers,
Which were once wood,
Pale criminal,
Has any of this
Been explained to you?
Pale criminal,
Do you know
What you are?
In the city of necrophilia
A frightened public wants to know
If your hatred is real.
Charles Manson said,
"Dead birds don't fly.
It's just between me and God,
But there is no God.
Nixon said I was guilty
In the middle of my trial.
He said I killed 8 people.
How the fuck did that felon know?
Maybe he thought he was God.
Mr. and Mrs. America,
I see your life leaking out,
Like blood from a hole
In a bucket.
That's you, guys and dolls!
Humping your money together,
Together in your shopping malls.
Black and white races mixed together,
Together in your bathroom stalls.
I am not you,
But you are me.
Look, look,
Very carefully.
You are me.
Look, look,
For your children.
They are with me.
They are with me."
Let us begin our description
With the brain.
You will note,
Ladies and gentlemen,
That this is the brain
Of a psychopath.
Observe the extra fissures
Here on the frontal lobes.
The torso
Is that of a Christian,
With the typical sturdy trunk
And extreme rigor mortis.
Notice the third-degree burns,
Both anterior and posterior,
In the tell-tale shape
Of the Muslim Crescent.
In contrast
To the rigidly robust
Appearance of the trunk,
Observe the profound atrophy
Of muscle mass
In upper and lower limbs.
This distal emaciation
Of unknown etiology
Must have begun
A long time before death.
Most extraordinary,
Ladies and gentlemen,
The hands and fingers
Are strangely missing.
Yet where are the amputation scars?
In television land,
Where every boy gets a free audition
For the role of Pinocchio,
Where every boy eats a good breakfast
With his Ritalin,
Where future cheerleaders cry every night
Because their breasts are too small,
Where suburban housewives speak in tongues
To their homicidal husbands
"For a pair of reechy kisses,"
Where reality is defined by the MMPI,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Where are the amputation scars?
The interior
Of this body
Contains all the essentials:
Greatly inflamed and enlarged,
Notice the Volkswagen heart.
Arterial and venous flow
From the slow-dying West Coast
To the slow-dying East Coast,
From the Mesabi Range in Minnesota
To Brownsville Texas,
Has enabled vacant customers
On all fours
To bleed most respectably
Where murder is least understood.
Raymond Keen has recently completed his first volume of poetry, Love Poems for Cannibals, which will be published in early 2012. His drama, The Private and Public Life of King Able, will also be published in 2012. His poems have been published in The American Poetry Review, Pemmican Press, The Smoking Poet, Breadcrumb Scabs, Pismire, Twisted Dreams Magazine, Rem Magazine, The Camel Saloon, White Whale Review, Eunoia Review, The Literary Burlesque, Everyday Genius, Dirtflask, Copaiba Press, Lady Ink Magazine, Speech Bubble Magazine, Hobo Camp Review, Poet's Post Summer Anthology 2011, Radius, Marco Polo and Scythe.
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