The Method

It all depends on where your victim’s been.

Knives to the vitals, crowbars to the knee
might rack the mind less tortuously than
a kite whose shreds hang from a winter tree,
limp. Or a bedroom stale with lingering sweat.

The gut that matters isn’t yours, it’s his.
What squirms in it? His woman, naked, wet?
The sneering clerk at County Services?

Find out, poeta. Give him what he wants:
his own despair, not yours. Take it in hand.
Ignore its less-than-savory provenance,
its images hauled in like contraband
by metered goombahs and their capo, rhyme.

Strike with it hard, it kills. Most of the time.