I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies

1

I will no longer lightly walk behind

a one of you who fear me:

                                    Be afraid. 

I plan to give you reasons for your jumpy fits

and facial tics

I will not walk politely on the pavements anymore 

and this is dedicated in particular 

to those who hear my footsteps

or the insubstantial rattling of my grocery

cart

then turn around

see me

and hurry on

away from this impressive terror I must be:

I plan to blossom bloody on an afternoon

surrounded by my comrades singing

terrible revenge in merciless

accelerating

rhythms

But

I have watched a blind man studying his face.

I have set the table in the evening and sat down

to eat the news.

Regularly 

I have gone to sleep.

There is no one to forgive me.

The dead do not give a damn.

I live like a lover

who drops her dime into the phone

just as the subway shakes into the station

wasting her message

canceling the question of her call:

fulminating or forgetful but late

and always after the fact that could save or 

condemn me

I must become the action of my fate.

2

How many of my brothers and my sisters

will they kill

before I teach myself

retaliation?

Shall we pick a number?

South Africa for instance:

do we agree that more than ten thousand 

in less than a year but that less than

five thousand slaughtered in more than six

months will 

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ME?

I must become a menace to my enemies.

3

And if I 

if I ever let you slide

who should be extirpated from my universe

who should be cauterized from earth

completely 

(lawandorder jerkoffs of the first the

                  terrorist degree)

then let my body fail my soul

in its bedeviled lecheries

And if I 

if I ever let love go

because the hatred and the whisperings 

become a phantom dictate I o-

bey in lieu of impulse and realities 

(the blossoming flamingos of my 

                   wild mimosa trees)

then let love freeze me

out.

I must become

I must become a menace to my enemies.