David Lohrey


The Other Is Oneself


Is there anyone home? We are here
to end all human suffering. We have come
for the tyrant. In the end, he will be stabbed
in the rectum with a bayonet. There should be
no profit in profiteering. In the future,
nothing will be owned except for human beings.

Take the Kabuki underground
to the end of the line.
Paranoia is its own species of adrenaline.
The party is deductible.
Sing a song, make it simple.
We all obey kings in matters that are reprehensible.

All roads lead to St. Louis. There
we must take our lessons; there
we will learn to meow. There will be war
if someone’s taken my copy of “Set for Life.”
I haven’t had a chance to glance through it. Mexican
gangsters rape their prisoners with daggers.

If you will allow me to speak undiplomatically. On the
military side, we are not yet on the offensive, but
we will be soon. Writers terrorize readers with fat, boring books.
You know, I always get my revenge in my dreams, but never in real life.
They eat rotten apples and bologna. Doritos and yams.
They chug Kool-Aid and buy Bud in dated cans on discount.

It is not always the fair-minded who are in possession of the truth.
So much has happened, vile things, and glories beyond measure.
Timidity will get us nowhere. Join the party; sit here on the floor.
Eat the goat with your hands. You’ve become a kind of civil rights
masochist whose head is full of little magazines and nostalgia for riots.
I can’t look at you anymore.



David Lohrey is from Memphis. His plays have been produced in Switzerland, Croatia, and Lithuania. His poetry can be found in Otoliths (AUS), Tuck Magazine (UK), Terror House (Hungary) and the Cardiff Review (Wales). David’s fiction can be read online at Dodging the Rain, Storgy Magazine, and Literally Stories. David’s collection of poetry, MACHIAVELLI’S BACKYARD, was published by Sudden Denouement Publishers (Houston, 2017). He lives in Tokyo.
 
 
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