In real life, there was no chainsaw. <br />Nor was there a blood-sucking grandfather <br />carried down the stairs in his wheelchair <br />by a family of bumpkin cannibals. <br />No meditation on cows and sledgehammers <br />either, much less a van of college kids <br /> <br />pondering astrology just before, one by one, <br />they’re pulled behind the sliding tin door <br />of a killing room under the stairs, resplendent <br />with an overgrown chicken in a bird cage. <br />There were bones, yes, and grave-robbing, <br />even a homemade suit of women’s skin <br /> <br />but the true killer, Ed Gein, acted alone. <br />His weapon of choice was a small revolver. <br />Despite the opening sequence, he was not <br />driven to perform by solar prominence. <br />His mother, a dominating fundamentalist, <br />scolded her sons against making friends, <br /> <br />sermonizing the dangers of loose women. <br />He probably killed his only brother, Henry. <br />An old photo shows Gein in a checkered <br />hunting cap, unshaven, his thin drooping <br />eyes clouded by a thoughtful loneliness. <br />After the asylum, buried back in Plainfield <br /> <br />where they teased him for being a sissy. <br />One woman, Bernice Worden, was found <br />hanging from the rafters, gutted like a deer. <br />Newspapers showed him descending <br />the steps of the courthouse in shirt and tie, <br />handcuffed, grinning like a Rockefeller.<br /><br />Michael Meyerhofer<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/after-watching-the-texas-chainsaw-massacre/
