Sex and Murder Magazine

By Douglas Allen Rhodes

I hate people.
I hate them in that way you hate someone
you once thought that you could love,
like a father secretly hates
his retarded son,
like our Father must hate most of us.

It’s a cold, gray hate,
like the sky in November,
an ache that never,
ever,
fades completely,
just ebbs enough,
to blend into the background,
like the slow steady tattoo
of funeral drums,
or the distant drone
of a warning siren,
from somewhere else,
that you just know will reach you,
eventually,
disturbing your uncomfortable peace
with its cacophonous insistence
that you,
you,
do something about it.