Little Napoleon Antoinette
Stump in stature, gravity cursed,
the cross of Jesus hung
to the solar plexis of his chest,
holding him clutch to the hearth,
amplifying his Fundamentalist rage
toward the fly shit that surrounds him,
Politicking for a patron saintly state
of spotless oblivion in a "Freedom" T-shirt,
a tyrant rueful and fussy, grasping, invading,
leaning in to your every movement,
on the hunt for some dark relic for accusation,
throwing a wheel-chair-wounded Santa
out into the palm-lined heat island street,
loathing all he oppresses, the diamond necklace
affairs of the abode humming with OCD tension,
looking for the comfort zone in Christian skies,
hammered as a child for being left-handed,
& there's a secret silence in the mausoleum
now gone Bauhaus with printed paper squares
loaded with nanny state reminders,
authoritarian messaging issuing plain threats
as the ghosts of fear flow beneath shallow ice
since you can't compete with the Church Lady,
made of such over-sweet hysterical charity,
munching on wafers in the salted land,
loaded with dinero, never losing a penny,
bringing in an old grey, two of three strikes
already, a new cash cow for the pews,
complaining to his Lord & anyone else
who isn't listening. The falcon, the falconer
in a mismatch of abstract repressionism:
Nobody likes me here and I don't give a fuck,
calling everyone "assholes" as he ascends into the air,
& then, returning from the sin he failed to forgive
a giant mad mouse too small to roar
killed a broken man to clean a floor.
So they wave hosannas & roses & coins
& the perfect cure for donkey dung
satisfying the need to be in his lonely dream,
but he turns around and eats you, bone clean.
~ Douglas McDaniel,
Tolleson, Arizona
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