hot late August Monday 1994
in Oregon & the papers say Sunday a schizophrenic
woman in a sack dress clutching
a wailing Siamese cat and a sixinch
knife comes in the super
market complaining that she’s thirsty
enters the soft drink aisle
grabs a can of Coca Cola,
pops the top & still clutching the
moaning feline & the knife
puts a Winston in her mouth
& sits down on the floor lighting the
cigarette as she crosses her legs
& tells everyone her grandmother
is a satan worshiper, as the
employees barricade her at the end
if the aisle with grocery carts
& she starts yelling for the police, who arrive
all eight of them to spray her with mace and she,
in the indelible strength of her mental
disorder defends herself raising the knife over head
& the cops,
the frieghtened cops,
shoot her once in the neck &
three times in the chest,
in what is termed self-defense,
but is the doublesided evil
fear and loathing of
the unknown, unfamiliar and the long awaited chance to
use the hand gun on a fellow human being?

Within hours of this Sunday event
in Honolulu an elephant is spooked
in the circus by an inexperienced circus
hand & this 21 year old pacaderm tries to kill
the nineteen year old man who foolishly came up behind
the elephant & placed his hand on the leg of this
African beast which has been very unnaturally transported to
this paradise of blueness & money..
the beast’s trainer tried to intervene and it turned
on the circus man and killed him instead,
in India the new mahout is consdered expendable
in these circumstances..
& then the elephant broke free sending circus patrons
screaming for the aisles
the ensuing rampage of the rogue elephant
took to the chase thru
downtown Honolulu where the legs began
a pitiful escape attempt,
dwarfing toyotas sent to this island
by former bombardiers whose sights set only
now upon franchise & profit
before the police took a high powered rifle
& fired seven times into the beast’s neck to bring
it mammothly to its knees & animal control
attendant’s administered the final
downtown lethal injection,
the associated press did not
report what was done with the 9000 pound carcass.
“America’s pure products,” do “go
crazy,” thank you Dr. Williams & the
Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence
& the Constitution are all held @ bay by
P.T. Barnum’s hucksterism,
“There’s a sucker born every minute.”

Patterson, New Jersey is now adjacent to a toxic waste
dump & the Federal Reserve Board which operates
upon Barnum’s  theorem funds a process
in systems theory which keeps us all
here paying interest to an invisible elite
thank-you again, Dr. Williams
only we’ve not awakened yet,
almost fifty years
after you pointed this out & one hundred thousand
new police on the street
will not make a difference, the ones we
have now can take care of rogue elephants
& the knife wielding schizophrenics.
& the new ones will only enforce this theory of control.
The elephants eye comes to the surface
of the wire service photo & the quick action of the policeman
who killed the woman w/the cat,
this lie, much older than the past two millennial shift that sends
itself again & again as both disguised order
& undisguised disorder..
the seven dollar an hour job you can
get if you are lucky & sober
$4.25 if you are not..
coupled with the $1000.00 a month
for the decent house for you and your children
& then add on the security deposit and the last months rent

That same rage of the elephant’s eye
in your own good right hand and the blue
juice of the lethal injection is for you,
the one hundred thousand
new police wait are for systems theory & for all
who cross over the line, the white line, the picket line or the red
line that takes you to aisle number 4 for soft drinks.
In America magnum ordinance awaits ready in the holster for the angry
beast, or disordered cat-lover because of our unconsciousness of good as it really is
division upon division having paid only lip service to justice
contention, coupled upon contention I wonder what 12 years will bring &
in the street  gangs of fatherless  children arm themselves against an enemy
they cannot identify, yet they know exists
it’s two pm & my wife informs me
after arriving from the store this hot August
afternoon that there is
a forest fire one mile from our home.