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Carmine Giordano
The Idiot
He slipped into their railroad car
while they were sleeping,
the wild-eyed idiot of the suburban line,
and rattled the suited gentlemen
and the tailored ladies thus
with his shouting:
“Citizens of the mad world,
you who kill each other’s children,
throwing them down from the sky in planes
and drowning their dolls,
you who rip off their clutching hands and feet
as they look up at you
through the bombing glass of buses, cars and taxicabs;
you who kill your kind with the shrapnel of your bones
and the pieces of your heart,
Give up your Jesus, Allah and Adonai;
give up your presidents and prophets;
give up your assemblies full of national love;
give up your multicolored flags and your marching songs;
give up your history books;
give up your deeds and the contracts to your lands;
dismantle all your shrines;
erase the names of your martyred saints;
give up your separate tongues;
give up the bitch who kills us all,
your mother-god who favors only you and yours!
Stand with me in the fields,
in the rain and in the sun,
our bodies naked in the grass.
Link arms with me,
and start again.
We will create all things new!
I have been selected from the nations
to tell you this.”
At 9:05 at the Greenwich Station
the platform guards removed him
while the gentlemen riders coughed
and the ladies refreshed their faces.
Copyright (c)Carmine Giordano, 2005. All rights reserved.
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