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Memoirs Of Death Row, Or, What Does It Mean To Be Human? (#2)

Kenneth DiMaggio

In America
there is no proletariat
just folks working as
dishwashers and on
weekends hunting humans

Wars Riots & Action Movies
—if you don’t crank out
a steady supply of them
people start getting restless

I once couldn’t sleep
or sit before a television
and that’s what straight-jacketed
me to my first institution

Racing dirt bikes on soil
that was toxic or trying
to unhook brassieres
in a car that looked like
a fighter jet cockpit
—I had a typical American
boyhood

No surprise that the warden
is a woman and the guard strapping
me to the gurney in the gas chamber
used to wash dishes

I could have slept or watched
films with little dialogue but
a lot of guns firing over several
thousand bullets

but instead I chose
the more lonely
but for a time deeply
gratifying path
as a philosopher

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