I AM put high over all others in the city today.
  
I am the killer who kills for those who wish a killing today.
  
Here is a strong young man who killed.
There was a driving wind of city dust and horse dung blowing and he stood at an intersection of five sewers and there pumped
the bullets of an automatic pistol into another man, a fellow citizen.
Therefore, the prosecuting attorneys, fellow citizens, and a jury of his peers, also fellow citizens, listened to the
testimony of other fellow citizens, policemen, doctors, and after a verdict of guilty, the judge, a fellow citizen, said: I
sentence you to be hanged by the neck till you are dead.
  
So there is a killer to be killed and I am the killer of the killer for today.
I don’t know why it beats in my head in the lines I read once in an old school reader: I’m to be queen of the May,
mother, I’m to be queen of the May.
Anyhow it comes back in language just like that today.
  
I am the high honorable killer today.
There are five million people in the state, five million killers for whom I kill
I am the killer who kills today for five million killers who wish a killing.

Poet: Carl Sandburg
Poem: 18. Killers
Volume: Smoke and Steel
- IV. Playthings of the Wind
Year: Published/Written in 1922
Poem of the Day: Dec 22 2012

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