gun

Hour of the Gun

(x = space)

Hour of the Gun

(I don’t like writing this)

I don’t know

Maybe killing with a gun

Is just close enough

And far away

To feel wretched accomplishment

And to objectify

There is blood

Do we know that?

Do we anticipate

A little

Or a lot?

The organs that will stop

Inside the perpetration

The time of life

That’s ended

Before time

Allowed

The evil that may celebrate

While there’s scurrying

To get away with it

Or another resignation

Takes over

As I say,

I do not get it

But I don’t have a gun

Though I have been driven

And I’ve known

That things

Overwhelm

C L Couch

1 killed and 7 injured in shooting in Oakland, California

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/24/us/oakland-shooting-california/index.html

. . .

Just hours earlier about 40 miles southwest of Oakland, seven people were killed and one was critically wounded in shootings at two locations in Half Moon Bay, officials said. A 67-year-old suspect is in custody.

And in Southern California, 11 people were killed in a mass shooting Saturday night in Monterey Park.

add Idaho and everywhere else

Photo by Luis Domínguez on Unsplash

January 25, 2023 4

The Killings in Thailand

(x = space)

The Killings in Thailand

They were brought

Juice and popcorn,

Dolls

Everything they’d need,

The children at the daycare center

But this was funereal

The children had

Died

Killed by a madman who killed

Others, too

Killed his family

Lastly, himself

The families brought juice and popcorn,

Dolls

Snacks and toys

To the daycare center

For the children to enjoy their day

Everyone had been to the temples

Then they came here

Come back home

Come back with us

The parents

Parents and the living family members

Said

Pleaded

Cried

While exuding dignity,

Respect

For everyone

Come back home

Come back with us

They were there

At the daycare

Leaving presents, organic things

Symbolic things

The children would have used

At their age

For their lives

In the daycare

Everyone had been to the temples

More to follow there

Now they are here

Come back home

Come back with us

They can’t;

Insanity

And criminality

Has taken them

Spirits

Journey

Hard

But shall be

Reunited

Wrongful death

Owns no victory

The children

Other victims

Know this now

They shouldn’t have to

C L Couch

Photo by Charlotte Seo on Unsplash

October 10, 2022 0

A Lost World

(x = space)

A Lost World

I took my .22,

Shot at paper targets

I wasn’t very good

There were

I’m sure

Excuses

I could not shoot Bambi

There are those who could

And use the food

At home or to give

To other,

Hungry people

A bullet from a distance

What might Cain

Have devised?

With such Indiscretion

And the safety off,

He might have gone

After Seth

Then where would we be

For progeny

With only wives surviving, were

They out of range?

They might retrieve

The guns

Then learn to shoot for life,

Maybe instructed by

An angel

Out of Eden

An imagined state

Doomed,

We’d think

Excepting life to find a way

C L Couch

Suspect nabbed in stray bullet slaying of 1-year-old Brooklyn boy sitting in stroller last summer

The accused shooter in last summer’s horrific stray bullet shooting of a 1-year-old boy outside a Brooklyn playground was charged Thursday in the devastating death that shocked a pandemic-stricken city and rattled Mayor de Blasio.

. . .

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-suspect-arrested-stray-bullet-brooklyn-baby-stroller-slay-20210506-nbuzgsa3xzcivdlo7t7jbwzohu-story.html

Photo by Omkar Jadhav on Unsplash

Bullet Marks [jallianwala bagh], Gali Number 7, Ramanand Bagh, Katra Ahluwalia, Amritsar, Punjab, India

The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle, then by Michael Crichton

May 6, 2021 1

Fourteen Dead (it happened yesterday evening, my time)

Fourteen Dead

(it happened yesterday evening, my time)

“Fourteen dead in San Bernardino.
What is this inhuman trend?”
From my journal last night,
wondering what is going on.

Serial killers (I say serial means
mass murder, whether happening
once or over time)—they enter a
community center “with long
guns.” (This from the news.)

They shoot and kill.
Maybe they are killed or
captured afterward. The
investigation goes on.

We once feared a hand upon
an efficient surface, fingers ready
to press a button, sending atomic
missiles into space to fall back
to earth again in a foe’s land.
We still fear this.

We fear that killing from
afar lacks the moral intimacy
in killings of the past. We
worry about drones this
way. And we still have
more personal ways to kill.

Does a gun make the murder
seem distant, too? Pull a
shiny trigger, bullet travels
through a silvery barrel, the
target is hit. No personal contact
yet. Like the launch, is this
too easy, too?

If never done before, maybe
so. Or maybe when one
kills, there is no person there.
Only an objective.

December 3, 2015 11