Terminal Living

    "Everybody in the world is frightened of getting cut."
    Charles Manson

    I
    The image complete
    - collapsing corpses, rag dolls
    with skulls shot away ...
    ruby-red blood spurting
    slipstick/eyeshadow/mascara
    all so reptilian replete.

    II
    The long fingers of the pianist
    playing rifle fire to a
    captive audience,
    stiletto tones;
    the trance effect,
    precedes a cobra's strike,
    summer without smoke.

    III
    A glass of absinthe
    - the Degas painting,
    Marc Lepine measuring out his vial,
    measuring the worth of a single
    woman and finding her long on the call,
    cartridge shells exploding
    filaments of smoke
    (long and blue) like a
    woman's fingers up
    from his death gun.

    IV
    Existential longing -
    vision far ago, a
    lost world of virile primates
    where a man's worth
    transcended his tie-clip
    (suspenders ready, binoculars steady),
    letting the stiff upper lip quiver.
    Then his face the colour of rainwater,
    shoe leather in that same rain.

    V
    "I am not a wallet," but he was
    someone's son.

    VI
    Mystery (wretched Marc, so unfathomable
    inside your debâcle, mélée that
    the French so forlornly cloak,
    enfant perdu).

    VII
    Marc, you are not confined to "why",
    rather representative of a long line
    of predecessors dead certain
    they are nobley right. Gender knows
    no restraint. Male crazies? I see the cloaks
    and shawls of spectres breaking
    saloon bottles with an axe cursing
    demon rum, hear "red alert"
    at maternity wards after the shootings
    - boy babies, at risk, from estrogen cranks.

    VIII
    Strange, women speak of it,
    Lepine died for it - his ersatz,
    clouded vision, no milktoast he, yet
    so much egg on the face this dirty
    thing "Justice".
    Naughty boy taking one too many
    reprimands from Father, think
    of Madonna's spankie.

    IX
    All the same, Saddam Hussein,
    Pedro the Cruel (Butcher of Baghdad,
    Montreal or writhing throes of
    medieval pillage).
    Getting one's own lid pried off -
    the shaking indignation of Il Duce,
    Der Fuehrer, the sanctimonious
    hard-shell pose of Henry, Anne Bolyn
    in the cell block for being
    a witch (the reputed third breast
    was a dead give away).

    X
    Little ripple, then blip on
    a sonar screen trailing off
    terminal living. Frame of reference
    like a gyroscope breading free.

    XI
    History is a motherlode of fanatics
    by virtue of association.
    Wrong-minded'?
    Why not, I never met anyone
    who was wrong.
    No joy in loveland, everybody
    revelling in certain certitude this
    balkanization of the sexes, Holy Crusade,
    Jihad of the gender.

    XII
    Save us from people who are right,
    the "firm but fair" rabid feminists,
    rapid virilism crescendo intellects
    with egos to stop a train.
    Humility of purpose is decidedly
    inferior to quiet perseverance
    in the truth.

    XIII
    Inner light taken outside is
    fiery and blinding.
    Quietism. Pietism.
    Everything is a calling or,
    in the religious sense, vocation.
    What is not a longing'? Craving?
    Itch before the scratch?

    XIV
    The last, inner spike of saintly sanity
    snapping to "calling", that siren
    song persuasion Lorelei made
    vision.
    So watch their faces - lips set,
    eyes aglow giving us all "an offer
    we cannot refuse".
    Silver or lead, red hot poker
    up the innards in the name of
    Self-Determination.
    Columbian drug-lord, hat off
    cleaning her glasses after
    The Hit.

    There is no substitute for victory.
    Conviction has its price.
    Its a funny, old world if only
    Maggie Thatcher knew.