If a person is cutting you
making you bleed
is sharpening his knives going to stop him?

Is it going to give him an idea
of the repercussions involved in cutting you?
Is it gonna stop the slicing and dicing?

How happy must the cutter be
to have the victim’s  participation.

He must laugh in satisfaction
when he reads newspaper accounts
of the latest victim-turned-flunky
elected or promoted to the board of directors
of one cutters’ union or another.

He must laugh in satisfaction
knowing that his prints are not the only ones
now on the knives and other instruments of torture.

And we, the cut, the mutilated, the handicapped,
who are we with?

Are we with the cutter
the originator of self-hating flunkies and mutilation
the creator of our scarred condition?

Are we with those who came to a fork in the road
and chose the cutter’s path?
Those who, cut and bleeding, run to join the cutter
and guide his hand?

Or are we with ourselves?
With learning how to heal our wounds
With learning how to block the cutter’s knives
until we get strong enough
to destroy the places where the knives are made
and the thoughts that put the knives in the cutter’s hands?