2 Poems

Arthur Herman Bremer, Who Attempted to Assassinate Presidential Candidate George Wallace in 1972, Sits in a Milwaukee Pizzeria and Contemplates His Mental Illness

I can assure you I am not suffering.

You, maybe, but I am fine. In fact,

I mean, I’m alone, but who hasn’t 

braced his teeth, coatless, 

locked for hours outside by his mother

in Wisconsin winter weather?

Or when my dad, drunk off Old Milwaukee,

tried Killer Kowalski’s wrestling claw on my shoulder

when I didn’t call him sir?

I learned when to speak, which was never.

One day, I snatched a bill from his wallet;

he was busy watching Dragnet,

he was busy with a beer.

At the pizzeria, I gestured at the menu,

didn’t say a thing. I played a game 

with the waitress: I can name that pie 

in three points of the finger: Pepperoni. Sausage. Onion. 

Coming up, she chirped. 

I just nodded like a speed bag.

I just pulled out my dad’s crumpled ten,

flattened it on the sticky Formica,

and, no, I didn’t want change.

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Arthur Herman Bremer Fantasizes About Time in Relation to His Murderous Impulses After Failing to Kill President Richard M. Nixon in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

-- Not being sure if I would ever have a chance to get Nixon in Canada after missing him on my prime target date, I killed time inside. – Arthur Herman Bremer, Assassin’s Diary, pp. 73.

I am not sick.

I just want time to stop,

just a moment for me,

as if I am an ambulance

full of a dying president,

full of a bleeding world strapped to a gurney.

And all those people braking, craning

at the burst of lights, the siren screaming:

It’s me.

It’s me, goddammit.

Oh my god oh my god oh my god!