Terminal Living
by Paul Cameron Brown

"Everybody in the world is frightened of getting cut."
Charles Manson
I
The image complete
- collapsing corpses, rag dolls
with skulls shot away ...
ruby-red blood spurting
slipstick/eyeshadow/mascara
all so reptilian replete.
II
The long fingers of the pianist
playing rifle fire to a
captive audience,
stiletto tones;
the trance effect,
precedes a cobra's strike,
summer without smoke.
III
A glass of absinthe
- the Degas painting,
Marc Lepine measuring out his vial,
measuring the worth of a single
woman and finding her long on the call,
cartridge shells exploding
filaments of smoke
(long and blue) like a
woman's fingers up
from his death gun.
IV
Existential longing - 
vision far ago, a
lost world of virile primates
where a man's worth
transcended his tie-clip
(suspenders ready, binoculars steady),
letting the stiff upper lip quiver.
Then his face the colour of rainwater,
shoe leather in that same rain.
V
"I am not a wallet," but he was
someone's son.
VI
Mystery (wretched Marc, so unfathomable
inside your deb'cle, m'l'e that
the French so forlornly cloak,
enfant perdu).
VII
Marc, you are not confined to "why",
rather representative of a long line
of predecessors dead certain
they are nobley right. Gender knows
no restraint. Male crazies? I see the cloaks
and shawls of spectres breaking
saloon bottles with an axe cursing
demon rum, hear "red alert"
at maternity wards after the shootings
- boy babies, at risk, from estrogen cranks.
VIII
Strange, women speak of it,
Lepine died for it - his ersatz,
clouded vision, no milktoast he, yet
so much egg on the face this dirty
thing "Justice".
Naughty boy taking one too many
reprimands from Father, think
of Madonna's spankie.
IX
All the same, Saddam Hussein,
Pedro the Cruel (Butcher of Baghdad,
Montreal or writhing throes of
medieval pillage).
Getting one's own lid pried off - 
the shaking indignation of Il Duce,
Der Fuehrer, the sanctimonious
hard-shell pose of Henry, Anne Bolyn
in the cell block for being
a witch (the reputed third breast
was a dead give away).
X
Little ripple, then blip on
a sonar screen trailing off
terminal living. Frame of reference
like a gyroscope breading free.
XI
History is a motherlode of fanatics
by virtue of association.
Wrong-minded'?
Why not, I never met anyone
who was wrong.
No joy in loveland, everybody
revelling in certain certitude this
balkanization of the sexes, Holy Crusade,
Jihad of the gender.
XII
Save us from people who are right,
the "firm but fair" rabid feminists,
rapid virilism crescendo intellects
with egos to stop a train.
Humility of purpose is decidedly
inferior to quiet perseverance
in the truth.
XIII
Inner light taken outside is
fiery and blinding.
Quietism. Pietism.
Everything is a calling or,
in the religious sense, vocation.
What is not a longing'? Craving?
Itch before the scratch?
XIV
The last, inner spike of saintly sanity
snapping to "calling", that siren
song persuasion Lorelei made
vision.
So watch their faces - lips set,
eyes aglow giving us all "an offer
we cannot refuse".
Silver or lead, red hot poker
up the innards in the name of
Self-Determination.
Columbian drug-lord, hat off
cleaning her glasses after
The Hit.
There is no substitute for victory.
Conviction has its price.
Its a funny, old world if only
Maggie Thatcher knew.