The students’ minds were pages,
Awaiting moral text.
What they got was Acrimony’s Alphabet from adults.
These adults felt “A” represented Aversion to anyone antithetical
And the last letter was for Zealotry.
Awaiting moral text.
What they got was lessons in Antagonisms' Annals
From bullies who beat them the way slaves were beaten
And tortured them the way hostages were tortured.
The students’ minds were pages,
Awaiting moral text.
What they got was prejudice tutoring them proprietarily.
These days, the students are fluent in hate,
Possessing an old bigot’s vulgarism.
The students’ minds were pages,
Awaiting moral text.
What they got was the globe’s most itinerant pandemic
Beneath Afric, Asiatic and Caucasic faces.
The students’ minds were pages,
Awaiting moral text.
What they got was a tassel-headed graduation
And a welcome to the ever-battlesome world.
***
2. Their King Dirt Pervert
Moloch, the parent,
Loves filicide
And it won’t conceive remorse.
Moloch, the teacher,
Chalks impure lessons
Across young slates.
Moloch, the chaplain,
Conducts more than notes
In the boys’ choir.
Moloch, the coach,
Wants touchdowns
Along preadolescent fields.
Moloch, the puppeteer,
Strings then controls
Marionettes attending school.
Moloch, the kidnapper,
Mails enslaved girls anywhere
Perversion puts up the postage.
Moloch, the singer,
Lets auditory opiates
Procure puerile acolytes.
Moloch, the comic,
Throws Mickey Finn rumors
Under sweet pudding standup jokes.
Moloch, the dieter,
Sandwiches his lechery
Between underage escorts.
Moloch, the felon,
Pours honeyed rationale atop what he
Calls sexual boo-boos with babies.
Moloch, the videographer,
Tapes untarnished chicks
For voyeuristic hawks.
Moloch, the actor,
Lauds judicial limitations
In a pedophiliac soliloquy.
Moloch, the cinephile,
Won’t hear an epigram revealing
Woody Allen’s adopted wretchedness.
Moloch, the reader,
Will never see a verse
Howling Allen Ginsberg’s pederastic guilt.
Moloch, the recidivist,
Supports NAMBLA among other
Atrocities in need of either
Depo-Provera or annihilation.
***
3. Commuting into Myself
The fare to travel
this visceral subway
always goes up.
Commuting into myself
reveals train tracks
are my bones,
third rails
are my nerves
and hungry rats
encapsulate my disposition.
Superego Transit Cops believe
my feelings could be underground cells,
all anarchistic in nature,
so they check the bags
under my eyes,
considering if that’s where
I keep my pipe bomb visions.
My ill temper transfers
from train to train,
from thought to thought.
Sure enough,
my neuroses out gripes
sexagenarian grumblers
with each train delay,
derelict aspirations panhandle,
pleading to get some pleasure,
and my other big bipolar hordes
can’t get their problems
through the exits.
The Inner Voice
Address System
apologizes about the traffic
up ahead.
It explains why
turtles in a tar pit
would be better at transporting
me to my destination.
Ever a philomath,
I inspect the transit map
and seek life’s right station.
Maybe,
perhaps on the next ride,
I’ll find it.
***