I'm Afraid of Guns

[attentionhoard]

When someone asks me
Why I’m afraid of guns
I wish I could answer them
With a simple image
That proves to be
not so simple.
Close up
Zoom in
Zoom out
on the shouts of
Sudanese women
and children
with broomsticks
or baseball bats
shoved inside of them
without care of bother
ripping their innocent
flesh that meshes and turns
with the land of their fathers.

When someone asks me
why I’m afraid of guns
I wish I could answer them
with a simple sound.
The sound of
a bullet
digging through the
Solar-plexus of the
four or
five
hundred
seventeen to twenty year olds
in the Gaza Strip,
their blood dripping
through that bullet hole
to bless the ground
with their premature
acidic
sacrifice.

When someone asks me
why I’m afraid of guns
I wish I could answer them
with the conversation
Eric Harris and Dylan Kelbold
had the night before they busted
through the doors
of Columbine High School,
their pockets fat
with bullets and bombs
as they ordered the students with white hats
to stand up so they could paint the
school-spirited hallways with
their jock-brains.

When someone asks me why
I’m afraid of guns
I wish I could answer them
with the laughter of those two boys
and screams
as the kick-back from their
illegally acquired weapons
(which they had called Arlene)
gave them bloody noses.
Maybe that was a sign
you bastards,
That you weren’t powerful
enough to handle
those
damn
guns.
But shit, you were.
13 dead.
15 dead, including you.

But guns don’t kill people
people kill people,
Right?
That’s like saying soldiers
don’t fight wars,
countries do.
Right?
Tell that to one
of the mothers
of a young
solider
in Iraq
who had to be shipped back
in a flag-covered box
wooden and solemn
with dirt of the Middle East.
Say
her child
didn’t fight.
their country did.
Right?
Wrong.

When someone asks me why
I’m afraid of guns
I show them a picture of
Sarah Palin.

If the answer to
why I’m afraid of guns
was easy
as a single word answer
like the single bullet that
entered into Abe Lincoln’s
head
ending
the era of a new president
then this poem wouldn’t
have been necessary.