| You'll get four weeks for squatters in your attic, or for yielding to a hitchhiker's thumb. A month for spitting in the gutter if your spit fails to land on a bum. You're fined if you give them the time of day. Cuffed if you give them the watch on your wrist, and if you're caught sharing your wallet, your name goes on the list. We'll put footfalls at your back, pitbulls on your heels, thugs along your alleys, slash your wheels: one, two, three, four! They're the losers; they have failed. Our sewers and our jails are filling up with those that would not lift a finger. Don't you dare shelter those who could not be bothered.
We'll stuff epitaphs in your mailbox, burn epithets on your lawn. You can unplug the radio, the TV, the phone, but our voices go on and on. We're your neighbors, your landlord, the boss of your boss, we manage your stocks. Our kids work in shifts with aluminum bats, pacing your block, chasing your cat. It'll end with a midnight cocktail on your living room rug, thrown through the window--from Molotov with love. There is no shelter for those who help the helpless. Plainclothes soldiers of whisper-militias in bed with the working-class mob. The soapbox leads to cityhall, to the schoolboards, to death squads. Our agenda won't stop lengthening. Our creed: you bleeding hearts will bleed. Yes, our methods may not be written law (but the spirit is all there, isn't it?) So, no relief for scum, no second chance. We're through with sympathy--it changes nothing. Here on out, the old umbrella is closed. No more programs, crutches, no one left with guts enough to spare a half-cent. Victims we shall one day cease to be. No more bread and soup, no sleepers in the park. We're spirits lynching in the dark, non-events without a headline to read. Firehose and hounds blast through the streets. The billyclubs pound like a heartbeat. Crimes between the lines of written law. Passing bills and punching podiums and closing in on exaltation. It's always just a lynch or two away. |