Author Information
August 31st To November 9th, 1888
for Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman,
Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes,
and Mary Jane Kelly:
August 31st to November 9th 1888
"I am down on whores and I shant quit
ripping them till I do get buckled."
---"Dear Boss" Letter, received
September 27th, 1888
Once more, the annual cycle now begins---
the bloody epic of the Ripper's sins:
the murders of the (less than) innocent,
caught in a farce of fate none could prevent.
They, still, did not deserve to die that way.
Fears in the starless, dark, Whitechapel night
followed the tremors of a dismal day
hardly illumined by the slanted light.
Canonical they call them now, those five;
four murdered, and one able to survive
(leaving the murderer sliced up and dead---
some parts severed apart and blithely spread
about, but most on Mary Kelly's bed).
Think of them, sometimes, and their awful dread.
Starward
