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The Tertiary Stage (he probably thinks this poem is about him)


by Bill Yarrow


They say his irrational outbursts and insane rants
are the results of untreated syphilis. Well, that
makes perfect sense to me. I've always thought
of him as a tessellated spirochete, a narcissistic chancre,
festering pustule of a blistered imposthume. And why
wouldn't a claptrap mind also have the clap? But what
infected innocent gave it to him? There's the rub. That's
the paper-thin tissue not yet punctured howsoever soon 
it is to be assaulted. Ah, I don't care where he got it.
That he got it fills me with prosaic justice spiked with pride.
But hurry up. Bring this sub-cretinous indiscretion home.
The vile Tuskegee experiment lives on in his welcome end.

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