Plunder

The man with the moustache, who stole
many chickens, is picked clean at a line-up.
The man without a moustache who loved—
with nary a mansion—scores higher in EQ.

Equine the studies when it comes
to their portraits -- studs to the hilt
for cunt and money. And of course that pride
in riding down the most chickens, which lay

eggs, or didn't lay eggs, crowed or clucked,
picked at worms as if they were pearls,
strutted or scampered, as cocks or hens or
chicks scuttling at the sense of pit or market...

Whatever their sex or generation you knew
of the nervous energy in foretaste of turning
headless. Their wealth was buried in the ground.
All you had to do was call in the sentries

or Kristos, wall up the dig, raise the gates
to guard the cache, use dynamite or cyanide.
And it was all yours. You had the most number
ever of chickens. Never enough for the omelet.

But more than enough to fry, feed your refuse
from mistresses. When the lawyers arrive you say
it was all just shit, much shit, yet never enough
to power the lights up on the poverty line.

The songs will come back to you, in jail or crypt.
And you'll still get to burp off all the gravy,
some of the fries. The chit arrives and you're
discounted care of the Guinness book. Look. Sad.

© Alfred A. Yuson