Slave Killer

There is a hard wooden mallet

labeled Slave Killer

at the museum

I saw it the other day

with a dark rum in my flask

It

propped handsomely

inside a white interior latex & glass

display case  room temperature ice cube

flylessly untouchable

reflective

Slave Killer is an old petrified hand-carved

time and skullcap tested wooden Billy club

with two shark tooth shaped protrusions

Skull splitters

weighing down the business end

It

is righteousness strike one

and being a historically important museum artifact

has undoubtedly been used to do just that 

on countless historically unrecorded occasions

And it’s such a lonely Slave Killer

locked in that light box

with no skulls to pulverize

and no brains to engage fully

Slave Killer’s peculiar patina

a black lo-gloss stain

handle worn

shark teeth worn

If it weren’t for the raised grain

it wouldn’t even pass for wood

Too dark

Too otherworldly

When any particular slave wasn’t quite doing it for you any more

you slammed those wooded shark teeth into 

its

skull

and fed the corpse to the dogs

Immediate

Doubtless

Slave Killer

It

As strange as they are to me

I’m interested in these Native American artifacts

and Slave Killer is a perfect example

of an unusually interesting item

It

is Haida

or

 Makah

something from the Pacific Northwest

Maybe Quilliut

Shit!

I forget

the rum encourages confusion

Or is it Egyption?

Or is it Asian? Mongol?

Or is it Norse or French or Slavic or Arabic or Pacific Islander?

African Roman Greek Italian Spartan or Venetian? What about Sardinian? Canadian?

I forget, is Slave Killer Spanish? Eastern European? Aryan? South American Aryan?

Scottish? English? Wonder Breed American?

Slave Killer killed strong bodies 

but where the hell is it from again?

So many slave traders

So many cultures

I forget which this Slave Killer is

It started out as Native American

but now I’m not so sure