Stalin said to kill all the Jews first, no, wait, Hitler is doing that,
let’s kill the dancers instead.
Hitler said go to Africa and kill all the elephants who do not have blue eyes.
When the zookeepers said but the elephants all have the brown eyes of the Blessed Virgin
Hitler said kill the zookeepers too.
Pol Pot said to kill all the teachers last, except that from now on,
the word red really meant the word blue, and Wednesday is now Friday,
and the word last now means the same as first.
The teachers said to kill anybody who writes a sentence fragment after the third
or fourth week of class when we already have covered that.
The people who write sentence fragments say to kill the people who write run-ons.
The paper says to kill the non-erasable pen.
The pen says to kill the scissors, the gluestick, and the portable typewriter.
The grass says to kill the leafy apple tree that is going around spreading
such a ridiculous amount of shade.
The apple tree says to kill all the apple tree worms.
The apple tree worms say to kill all the illegal immigrants
and then the apples will rot on the trees
as the apple tree god intended.
The apple tree god says to kill all the orange trees.
The orange tree says to kill all the peach trees, the guava trees, the mango trees,
and especially all the Texas grapefruit trees.
The Texans want to kill the homosexuals.
The homosexuals want to kill their Republican fathers.
The fathers want to kill New York which is the home of too many poets,
blacks, dancers, homosexuals, editors, and teachers.
The teachers have changed their minds and now want to kill everybody
who still cannot double-space, I mean how hard can it be for crissake.
Allen Ginsberg says to kill the people who work for the CIA, the ones with very
clean underpants, and anybody who does not like Walt Whitman.
Walt Whitman says to kill Emily Dickinson, that stuckup bitch, no, wait,
kill everybody who is not vast and contains no multitudes, no, wait,
kill those who never contradict themselves.
The editor says to kill everybody who spells Cosmos with a K.
The authors say to kill the editors first.
The MLA says they would say to kill the APA if words had any meaning
and were not a context-based patriarchal hegemonious construct.
The women say to kill the men who call them honey.
The men say to kill the women who drive Ford Expeditions and have for three years
and still cannot park inside the lines.
The lines say to kill the weeds.
The weeds say to kill the bees and the bees say to kill anybody
who does not have stripes.
The convicts say to kill the wardens.
The wardens want to kill the canoes and the canoes want to kill the kayaks.
Meanwhile the teachers have changed their minds and want to kill the billboards
that need apostrophes and do not have them.
The billboards want to kill the pigeons.
The pigeons want to kill the people who eat burritos, tacos, caramel corn,
french fries, handfuls of peanuts, saltine crackers, and cheetos
and who refuse to spill some on the ground for the rest of us.
The rest of us say to kill anybody who is not part of the subset,
rest of us.
Poets want to kill the people who cannot sit still even for a two-page poem.
The two-page poems say to kill all the three-page poems, and, also,
any haiku written after 1700.
The haiku says, what is the sound of a frog jumping in a pond
after it has been killed.
The nails on the cross say to kill the Blessed Virgin whose eyes are the eyes
of an elephant, for giving birth to Jesus, which made them end up here
being hit on the head by Roman hammers.
Buddha says careful, do not kill that fly, it is sitting on your hammer.
The hammer says, careful, you are sitting on a statue of Buddha
and the Taliban is coming.
The Taliban says nothing because God has listened to the prayers of the Baptists
and all of the jihadists in Afghanistan have been struck mute.
The mutes say nothing because they are listening to the beautiful music
of a fly weaving a sonata out of the leaves of the apple tree
and the smell of a pie cooking in a farm house
and the last breath of Walt Whitman.
Emily Dickinson says, even the last breath of Walt Whitman lasts too long
but that is okay, it is still early,
the leaves are still on the trees
and after all,
really, when it comes down to it,
we have got all night.
The author of seven books, Charles Hood teaches English at Antelope Valley College. He dropped out of college nine times and has been a dish washer, a factory worker, and a professional nature guide in Africa. He was once offered a job in Antarctica. He has two projects in progress; one is an ecological and cultural history of the South of France, called Core Sample, and one about tigers, tentatively called Food for the Moon.