One nation under God

Certain parts of your body,

don't you just want

to cut them off, they're so disgusting?

Don't you wish you could plane away

your ass, your thighs, half your nose,

until you looked right?

And people who don't get your jokes

or literary references, I mean

when you deliver the perfect line

from A Streetcar Named Desire

that absolutely fits the occasion

and your companion only looks

at you blankly-you want

to strangle him, don't you?

Just take his tie-

people who wear ties

deserve what they get-

and loop it around his neck

the way a junkie takes a thin

rubber tube and squeezes it

around the arm so the veins pop?

Can't we rid ourselves of junkies

while we're at it, shoot them full

of that contaminated heroin from Mexico

that eats through flesh?

What about students

who refuse to look up a single word

they don't understand, and then

use words like classist and elitist

to justify their stupidity,

what about them, and how about

all the blacks and Italians, the Asians

and natural blondes,

wouldn't it be better to round them up

and ship them all someplace

like Texas and surround them

with a big electric fence,

and don't try to tell me that a redwood

or a zygote or a lever-pulling monkey

in a lab is more important

than a human being, because then

I'm going to want to fuck you up really bad.

Reckless freeway drivers, I know

we're on the same page there.

Lane-changers, tailgaters, swervy

Indy 500 wannabes, they should just

be lined up and shot, execution-style.

And speaking of executions. How many

have there been lately? Not nearly enough.

We've got problems in this country I tell you.

If thy right eye offend thee

you know what to do.

And thy left eye, too.

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated May/Jun 2003
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved