Remove the head, and what is left?
A pile of blood and scales and bone
All crumpled down into a heap beneath the sun--
Oh great Saint that saves us!
Illustrious in design, ye mighty with a sword
And helpful with shield and steed.
A slice, a crack, and dead dragon lies
As many creatures fore and aft.

Remove the head, and what is left?
A cry forever echoing through leaves,
A blade now stained with blood undeserv'd
From a creature who had not instigated.
Snicker-snack, indeed, fair boy
Who ran headlong into the wood
To prove his father's cry unjust
And in its stead a death now perpetrated,
Letting the Tum-Tum feed upon its form.

Remove the head, and what is left?
As preacher says to flock at dawn,
"These deadly sins, you shall not take
Into your vocabulary, not by me!"
And we do nod and agree in word,
But then in deed we transgress entire--
Until we find our backs on brick
And see the truth in callous coldness,
But that our victim, left to cogitate
Inside a cardboard moving crate
Is now but a fable for our detective intrepid.

Remove the head, and what is left?
A sweating pile of secret desires,
All wet from running hither, yon,
With limbs akimbo, running contrails
Like so many planes of peacock ilk--
These beings inside beings borne
Of imagination and loneliness;
Of something more than what we're given,
This emotional upholstery that swaddles those
Who then embrace the world at large
With all the love they may not show,
But in these suits of sutured fur
They kiss the dawn and praise the moon.

Remove the head, and what is left?
Something much more potent.