Good People, Please Refrain

 

God save us from the would-be savers of the world,

with their heartfelt poems preaching

to the choir in black and white,

reminding us that governments are oppressive

and genocide is frowned upon 

in all the proper circles.

Print it on a sign in thick black sharpie,  

write in in blood in a letter to the manager,

chant it as you march 

upon the gates of the Capitol,

the gates of heaven,

the gates of hell,

please just not another poem

that someone, possibly me, 

will have to sit though,

snapping their fingers 

and nodding their heads

in solemn affirmation.

Listen, I hate them too, 

the feckless killers with empty eyes,

sworn enemies of beauty and joy

with not a soul between them to sell,

feeding us death until we forget to choke.

I want to tear their faces off

and put them in cages where

they will drown in their own excrement.

I want them caught and devoured 

by everything that haunts their dreams. 

Friends, I will join you in cursing 

their names and their families

to hell for a lifetime of eternities

as we stone them to death in the public square,

just not another poem, like all the other poems.

Good people, please refrain as I have not.

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I Don’t Understand

How they expect us,
at any given moment,
not to drink ourselves 
into another place,
set the cities afire,
and throw ourselves
from the tallest buildings 
as an act of self defense.
Or, at the very least,
call in sick and get high as shit,
wandering the streets and alleys
dazed in search of the closest thing
to beauty they forgot to kill,
ending up in some 
shitty dive where they 
play punk rock 
at the 2 fer 1 happy hour
every fucking moment,
every fucking day.

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He Said They Shot a Poet

He said, hey, did you hear they shot a poet,
as if it were some kind of news, as if it were
something that had never happened before,
as if the world didn’t have a long and storied
history of such occurrences.
He said, hey, they shot a poet, and I said everybody’s
a poet these days, they shoot poets like they shoot
novelists and go-go dancers, like they shoot
horses and butchers and losers and freaks.
He said, hey man, they shot a poet, now it’s personal!
as if it hadn’t been personal the first time they shot anybody at all.
He said, hey man, they shot a poet, and I said, yeah, well, no shit.