High Mountain October

album

Long Mountain and Turkey Hill Pond

album

shooters

I don’t get it.

I don’t know any reason for it.

That’s part of the horror.

The innocent victims massacred.

What’s the point?

It’s not like the martyr’s sacrifice

Striking back with the only available weapon

Fighting the oppression of foreign occupation

Motivated by the cause.

That I can understand.

With this there’s a different profile

Never tagged as terrorists

Mostly white male youth firing automatics

Target students.

What are they thinking?

Again and again the grisly scene repeats

Like a contagious mental illness.

Do the shooters identify with the power of the killer?

I do not want to get inside their head.

Not the world I knew growing up.

The children in classes nearby me surely imagine the scene

Sudden death at the hands of a crazed gunman

While the children living far off where the resistance carries on

Expect their lives to explode at any moment.

Such a fearful symmetry.

Not the mutual assured destruction of my childhood

Cold war classroom civil defense drills

Get under your desk away from the windows

As if that would make any difference.

Now the weapons are improvised the warfare is asymmetrical.

The refugees arrive

Bringing their shattered lives to our attention

Desperate to find sanctuary

Seeking out the prosperous imperial center.

Coming home to roost.

Bearfort Ridge

album