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Halloween in Cambodia

So you sucked the blood
from a girl or two
and think that you're a fright.
Turn into a bat,
drop the hemostat.
You're a creature of the night.

You make your escape
in a black silk cape
and sleep inside a tomb.
Dream 'til noon
of a dining room
and all who you'll consume.

You think there's nothing left to fear
but your fangs won't help you here.
Brace yourself, my dear.
Brace yourself, my dear

for a Halloween in Cambodia
where even vampires scream.
It's a Halloween in Cambodia.
No escaping this bad dream.

Werewolves might take
a sheep or two
and kill them while they flail
but they can't outdo the human race
making death
on industrial scale.

No candy bars
or trick or treat
keep Khmer Rouge away.
Bullets in backs
knives to throats
in gruesome porch displays.

Now the death squad's had their fun.
Even monsters turn and run.
Better flee, my son.
Better flee, my son

from a Halloween in Cambodia
where skulls are stored on racks.
It's a Halloween in Cambodia's
megalomaniac.

Pol Pot Pol Pot Pol Pot Pol Pot
Pol Pot Pol Pot Pol Pot Pol Pot

If you spend Halloween in Cambodia,
you'd better change your plans.
It's a Halloween in Cambodia.
No killer's worse than man.
Pol Pot

by Jon Wesick

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Jon Wesick is host of San Diego's Gelato Poetry Series and an editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He has published over two hundred poems in journals such as The New Orphic Review, Pearl, Pudding, and Slipstream. He has also published fifty short stories. He has a Ph.D. in physics and is a longtime student of Buddhism and the martial arts.