Charles Manson is Dead as the world loses order,
chokes itself in a pell-mell haze.
His mother sold him for a glass of beer.
His son killed himself. No wonder:
the shame, his wild gaze.
Sharon Tate is dead and he gave the orders;
he invented God, who invented murder.
His mother sold him for a glass of beer.
He named himself Christ, a jug of wine, a boxcar,
claimed there were all kinds of Jesuses.
Charles Manson is Dead as the world loses order—
presidents and kings, guns and borders.
His insides started bleeding, his mind a maze
with no safe exit. He handed out knives but couldn’t
be there.
That jagged third-eye tattoo gone if for a kind word.
Charles Manson is Dead as the world loses order.
His mother sold him for a glass of beer.
Jennie Malboeuf is a native of Kentucky. Her poems are found in The Southern Review, VQR, Prairie Schooner, FIELD, Third Coast, AGNI, Epoch, The Moth, Memorious, ZYZZYVA, and Best New Poets. She teaches at Guilford College in North Carolina.