guns

Future Perfect

(x = space)

Future Perfect

What is that, Father?

The child asks,

Pointing

Like accusation

That is a gun, the

Father says

Over the mantel

Perched

By law

But, observes the child,

It’s falling apart;

I can barely tell the shape

Of it

Yes,

Father replies,

And that is the way

Of all guns now,

Now that we’ve grown

To take

Care of each other

And put the guns

Aside

And, as we have,

Reminders

Later in the day,

Mother enters

And has news

From work:

The assembly made the choice

At last

To take them down,

To put up other tokens,

Totems, symbols,

What have you

What have us

Instead

And so

The gun is taken down,

Parts swept off the mantel

And

For a while

The peaceful emptiness there

Pervades

While the family

Talks

About what to put there next

C L Couch

Photo by Patrick Metzdorf on Unsplash

March 17, 2023 1

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

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

Pittsburgh Last Night

Pittsburgh Last Night

Pittsburgh where I grew up

Five persons killed by two others

Using guns for the sole purpose

Of murder

The victims

Hoping without conscious

Thought to take part in the

Open—a backyard festivity

Homiest of parties

Home belief destroyed

Celebration as a cause

Never believed in again

Debates will go on

Who cares

The sides were answered

Yesterday

Talk is over when bullets

Tear through people

Debate done

March 10, 2016 7

Not No Guns

Not No Guns

Why not make it harder
As in better
To get guns?

Harder meaning safer
Better checks
Shared accountability

If you are a crazy person
Then I apologize
But you should not have a gun

You need better aid
Than that
Guns will not be your help

January 6, 2016 3

Second Freedom USA Suggestion

Second Freedom USA Suggestion

We don’t have our guns taken
(if I said that before, I was wrong)
Rather
We give them up

To those who duly need them
And are rightly trained to use them
To use against those who
Mis-use guns and seek to
Mis-use us

Loving our freedoms
Among them, consciousness toward peace
We send the message
We don’t need them day by day
The guns are a measure we
Truly can live without

No coercion though
But a plea
And a moderating suggestion

December 18, 2015 2