Now or Never

Just maybe as a nation we
This time can see the slain as prey
And not, as kooks would have them be,
Fit martyrs for the N.R.A.
To propagate a greater cause
For ever looser weapons laws.

Who needs gigantic cartridge clips
Or semiautomatic guns
Except to monstrously eclipse
The latest fright that briefly stuns
Until it’s quickly last week’s news,
Chaotic in conflicting views?

Just think back to the early years
In your own elementary school.
What could have been the worst of fears
Besides arrival of a ghoul
Who opened fire on the class
And watching Clare and Larry pass?

The shooters are at all times guys
My guess their guns are phalluses.
Detached from what’s before their eyes
They signal only callousness
As though by then their kills were dead,
Their bodies left behind to shred.

The Bill of Rights is no defense.
The armed militias it regards
Today—as dictates common sense—
Are local cops and national guards,
Not single citizens, though sound.
There’s too much happenstance around.

We like to think our legacy
Is two-gun Wild Western grit.
But acts to rein in savagery
A cultivated world befit.
The samurai once ruled Japan,
Which now inflicts a weapons ban.