slemslempike | Poetry thing

When I was fifteenish, I was into Beat Poets, and my English teacher encouraged this, because he was involved with AK press and various other ventures, and told me where I might find some poetry by women. This was one of my favourite poems when I was doing my teen angst things, and I still like it very much. I am pretty much incapable of remembering poems, though, and all I can ever remember of this is the first line, and that's only because it's the same as the title.

First They Slaughtered the Angels
By Lenore Kandel

First they slaughtered the angels
Tying their thin white legs with wire cords
And opening their silk throats with icy knives
They died fluttering their wings like chickens
And their immortal blood wet the burning Earth
We watched from underground
From the gravestones, the crypts
Chewing our bony fingers

Now in the aftermath of morning
We are rolling away the stones from underground, from the caves
We have widened our peyote-visioned eyes
And rinsed our mouths with last night’s wine
We have caulked the holes in our arms,
And flung libations at each other’s feet
And we shall enter into the streets and walk among them and do battle
Holding our lean and empty hands upraised
We shall pass among the strangers of the world like a bitter wind
And our blood will melt iron
And our breath will melt steel
We shall stare face to face with naked eyes
And our tears will cause Earthquakes
And our wailing will cause mountains to rise and the Sun to halt
They shall slaughter no more angels
Not even us

(Oh, I also like this, which is by Diane Di Prima. This is the whole poem: "Get your cut throat off my knife.")