UNDERGROUND VOICES MAGAZINE/TOM GAZDAG


	UNDERGROUND VOICES: POETRY

TOM GAZDAG

Deep Inside the Virus

They led him to the guillotine
masked
and
shackled.

And the throngs,
the massive,
the great,
the convinced
among us,
roared
as
if the long walk
was somehow an invitation to rapture.

“Son of a bitch!” cried the old women.

“Bastard!” they spat,
while readying the bricks
or hot coppers
or opened 2 liter Mountain Dew bottles
filled to the brim with piss.

And when they got to the spot,
they pulled his mask off,

and he was laughing…

laughing and trembling and clenching his fists,

screaming “Hot damn! Let’s get this show on the road!”

And as they set him in place,
the tears came,
tears as he thanked the headsman,
thanked the crowd,
thanked whatever gods were milling about
that had earmarked him for this.

When the blade fell,
his head flew off like a great laughing, crying cannonball,
launched into the throngs,

and landing on the lap of an old woman.
“Yes!!!” he cried. “This is better than the Happy Ending massage parlor on 33rd and seventh!!!”

The old woman shrieked and was soon stone dead.

And those that saw to his body,

noticed that it jerked convulsively
and came

before going amongst the throngs,

who now no longer roared or cursed or spat

and retrieving that head,
now snoring contentedly.

Tom Gazdag is a broken man living in Queens, New York. He sings broken songs
and writes broken stories about broke, broke, broken stuff while waiting for
a redemption that will likely never come.