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I can drive through these poems
Like a Satanic killer cruising down
The 1980s Los Angeles Freeways
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Highway to Hell on the stereo.
My baseball cap: On. My high tops,
Size twelve: On. My trench coat, black: On.I once was a robber, now I’m a robber
Of souls. Think about it, and nightmare:
You wake; I’m over you, your wife:
Next to you, a gun in your face, you’re dead.You see, I’ve snuck into your house,
It was so isolated, on your quiet street,
No one noticed as I crossed the street,
Stealthy as the Angel of Death, my coattailsSpread like black wings—you see,
There was a marking on your door,
But instead of lamb's blood, an invisible
Sign, that only I could read, it said: victims.I’ve killed you. I spend hours with your wife.2. California LegendThere is nothing cool about murder,
Except when it’s in a poem,
Or a movie, then it’s something else,
It’s not killing people, it’s killing ideas.Richard Ramirez is dead, he died
On death row, a year ago,
He was a California legend,
“The Nightstalker,” who hauntedThe LA landscape with the specter
Of his threat: the tall intruder
Who would spend hours with victims,
Won by the lottery of his instincts,Sometimes young, sometimes old,
As old as eighty, my grandmother’s age,
Raped and killed, not for their bodies,
Wrinkled and valueless, but for the powerOver them he wielded, in the dark, the two,
Alone. And then caught, and given a face,
And the famous picture in the courtroom,
Pentagram on his palm, devil in his eyes.
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Himself, with his AC/DC fetish—
Who will use culture to shape
The demeanor of their evil.Don’t use these poems faces,
Use these poems like equations
In Math, and interpretations
In English to decipher a way out.Think about the darkness a min,
In order to see through the façade
Of imprisoning light. We’re all
Trapped in houses and things,Lined up and ready to interface,
Like a programed set of computers,
And then here comes the killer, down
The freeways, and into our towns,Like a virus, ready to corrupt order
And put everyone on the defensive
Because someone has taken fate
Into his own hands, and shook, shook,Shook! Fuck that guy who shot Lennon.4. Satan Out of His ShellThe capture of Ramirez was comic
And just. He had returned to LA
On a bus after a bad visit to his bro
In Arizona or New Mexico, all the copsWere waiting, because he had been
Identified, but they were all watching
The outbound busses, so Richard
Just walked through the downtownGreyhound station behind the backs
Of half the police force and into a bodega
To buy some cigarettes, when,
An old Spanish lady called out: “El Diablo!”One the front page of the papers in the rack:
His face. He ran. First across the freeway,
His old vein of death, and through the heat,
To, by God and by right, a Latin neighborhood,Where first he tried to steal a car, and then
Another, and then was hit over the head
With a steel rod. He puttered out on his last
Bit of energy, depleted by the sun and lossOf blood, hissing at the ladies as he passed.

