The Middleweight Curse

The Michigan Assassin: murdered.
His father: murdered.
His mother: murdered.
His murderer: murdered.
The femme fatale
for whom the murderer
murdered: murdered.
That's murder.

I can't put my finger on it exactly, but there's always been something interesting to me about repetition. I used to think about how if you said the word 'trout' over and over so many times, it really sounds absurd and meaningless. But that's not exactly what's going on in the example above, especially with the final line that puts a twist on the meaning. Also the meaning rhymes of murder/assassin/fatale add a density to how the word is heard and interpreted. Maybe it is somehow about making the word strange and opaque, to borrow an idea I first got from Lew Welch. The word still has meaning, still functions in some way that is related to its conventional use, but it also takes on a separate life of its own. It works not only in the everyday sense it has, but simply as a structure, somewhat like a bunch of not exactly identical bricks makes a wall.