Chris Santiago - McKinley Praying lyrics

“k** every one over ten.” Gen. Jacob H. Smith, U.S. Sixth Separate Brigade, 1902 Sometimes like a sultan I put on a disguise & walk among the people. The women have Modigliani faces. The men wear nooses of fire. I try to tell the soldiers that every insurrecto they grease is Walt Whitman but they're getting angry & righteous since he won't lie down or be licked. I cover him with a blanket I've just bought from a chuckling Eskimo. It is many-colored & uninfected by smallpox. A murderer lurks among the stalls but I do nothing to stop him—he's the President disguised as an actor; you can tell by his yellow teeth. One by one he k**s my incarnations while they browse for souvenirs for my six thousand siblings who've gone overseas for work. From his hand he unfurls a bandage long enough to blindfold every bronze-skinned boy over the age of ten. They co*k their heads, as if listening. I hear footsteps behind me. This is my last life a vintage courtesy of a foreign power ready to drink and black. From the window of a nipa hut Some kind of Indian offers me a wreath—