Why I Love Marilyn Manson

Beautiful saint,
shouting into the storm,
invoking Pazuzu and Humwawa
out of the abyss,
to kick the ass of
that bully in gym class
who made you cower,
beg for mercy
that just wasn't coming.
 
I love this white-faced bogey man,
this parents' dread,
Nuns' nightmare,
the politicos' whipping boy.

He pauses, lifts a glass
on stage, and screams,
"Here is to the outcasts!
to the underachievers,
the hold-outs,
the defrocked,
the disgraced,
the broken and
unworthy.
 
Praise be to all defiant fagots,
weird witches dancing naked
on the beach, far away from
prying eyes,
to the sacred whores staunching the
wounds of ruptured desire.
I honor those at the end of their ropes.
I aspire to the grace of falling angels
and the time they take to ignite."
Then he drains the glass,
and let's it fall.
 
He reminds us all the respectable
slots are filled.
The sacred lots are sold.
 
Jerusalem is now a piece of real estate.
The virgin birth a question on your bio exam
Mohammad is a bloody historical stain
seeping down the coroner's drain.
 
Everyone else a desperate refugee,
shaking heads delirious with dismay.
 
But something is hovering.
Something teeters on the
brink.
Some crucial memory is stuttering
on lips that cannot
blink.
 
So we pause and wait,
when we should wail
and gnash our teeth.
 
While Marilyn Manson grinds
his ambiguous crotch
against a rent-a-cop,
demanding we figure it out,
reminding the thugs
of every hue
their days are numbered.