Poem: 'No Tears For Jeffrey Dahmer'

NO TEARS FOR

JEFFREY DAHMER /

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST

AS A DEAD SERIAL KILLER

a black fluid melts
under the impact
of moonlight

night is the killer
I, the knife, this is
what I choose to pretend

I lose my name,
I’m the cat in the hat
void within void, climbing
tall cranes to meet the moon

I list techniques of death,
hunt random significances
growing from zero to
arrival at emptiness

in the thirties I’m a Red fellow-traveller,
in the fifties I read Kerouac, live ‘Howl’,
grow a goatee, dream BeBop, and smoke pot,
in the sixties I do acid and chant mantras,
in the eighties I sleep in ‘phone booths,
use signals from off-the-shelf VHS,
lick spirals of blood from toilet floors,
dispense the kiss of immortality in
polished silver penetrations poking
moonlight into lovers with
luminous smoothness

watch
the bulge and swirl of blood
watch
the dreams and disgust
see black fluid melt
under each impact,
night is the killer
I, just the knife, this
is what we choose to believe

I live with the celebrity of death,
with Peter Sutcliffe, David Koresh,
Mark Chapman, Jeffrey Dahmer,
Kurt Cobain, Charles Manson,
Ian Curtis, Frederick West,
Dennis Neilsen, Lee Harvey Oswald,
Ian Brady, Gary Gilmore,
we need death to surviv
 immune from guilt, what
others call killing, I
call releasing flame

a black fluid melts, and
killers become moonlight
in the lurking camouflage
of night





Published in:
‘SPLIZZ no.8’ (UK - May 1995)
‘PENNY DREADFUL REVIEW no.24’ (USA - April 1995)
‘KNICKERS: BOGGERS ALL no.3’ (UK - Dec 1995)
and the collection:
‘A REASON FOR STAYING / THIS IS THE END:
POEMS BY STEVE SNEYD & ANDREW DARLINGTON’
Silver Gull Publications (UK - April 1999)