Five Ways to Kill a Man

There are many cumbersome

ways to kill a man.

You can make him carry a plank

of wood

to the top of a hill and nail him to

it.

To do this properly you require a

crowd of people

wearing sandals, a cock that

crows, a cloak

to dissect, a sponge, some

vinegar and one

man to hammer the nails home.

Or you can take a length of steel,

shaped and chased in a traditional

way,

and attempt to pierce the metal

cage he wears.

But for this you need white

horses,

English trees, men with bows and

arrows,

at least two flags, a prince, and a

castle to hold your banquet in.

Dispensing with nobility, you

may, if the wind

allows, blow gas at him. But then

you need

a mile of mud sliced through

with ditches,

not to mention black boots, bomb

craters,

more mud, a plague of rats, a

dozen songs

and some round hats made of

steel.

In an age of aeroplanes, you may

fly

miles above your victim and

dispose of him by

pressing one small switch. All

you then

require is an ocean to separate

you, two

systems of government, a

nation's scientists,

several factories, a psychopath

and

land that no-one needs for

several years.

These are, as I began,

cumbersome ways to kill a man.

Simpler, direct, and much more

neat is to see

that he is living somewhere in

the middle

of the twentieth century, and

leave him there.

- Edwin Brock