POEM: Everybody's Got One
By Craig Bechtel
As a respite from the often daunting barrage of statistics and harsh news stories, Armed With Reason will periodically offer GVP-related poetry to ponder.
Everybody’s Got One
By: Craig Bechtel
My ex-wife always said
“Excuses are like assholes,
Everybody’s got one.”
Today in Highland Park
There’s a boy who hasn’t yet turned two
Whose only memory of his parents
If he retains any memories at all
Will be watching their bodies blown to bits
Torn apart
Gushing with bright blood
His heroes felled forever
By a hailstorm of rifle fire
Some savior there in the middle
of the madding parade crowd
scooped him up and ran
I can hear
Or at least imagine
His cries for his mommy and daddy
As he was spirited away
From the unrelenting volley of bullets
Fourth of July fireworks
Aren’t supposed to land this way
Shot through a rifle’s barrel
From a sniper’s perch
These explosions don’t celebrate anything
They are explosions of blood, skin, tissue . . .
Parts of bodies that only surgeons should see
Seven corpses on the sidewalk
that only seconds before
Were that boy’s parents,
And mothers, fathers,
grandmothers, grandfathers
Sisters, brothers,
All children of someone.
But you say there is nothing we can do.
That the killer was twenty-two.
Those rifles were legally purchased.
No one knew he would do this.
He was a boy once too.
And when he threatened
to take his own life as a teen
it must have been a phase.
And five months later
After threatening to “kill everyone”
And the police came and seized his sixteen knives
There was no reason to suspect that he might be a threat
Never mind that he was fascinated
By the catalogue of death and bloodshed
Unique to modern America, the beautiful,
The lives destroyed,
The lawns covered with wooden crosses,
Growing up and getting mowed down
Like so many blades of grass.
No law stopped him
From moving from knives to guns
No one cared
that he had a map of the parade
route In his room for two years
No one could have foreseen
That he would kill five people
And the parents of the boy
Who hadn’t yet turned two.
No one stopped him
From climbing that fire escape ladder
Dressed in a disguise to escape,
Merging with the escaping,
Panicking paradegoers
As they ran for their lives.
After the fireworks were over,
He ran away, ran to his mother’s house,
Ran away with her car.
But a criminal is not a criminal
Until he’s committed a crime.
So after he killed seven people
In Highland Park
On Independence Day,
No shortage of authorities
Blanketed the streets,
Apprehended the suspect,
Took him into custody.
Murder One times seven was the charge,
Another bad guy with a gun locked away,
And now, one hundred seventeen counts all told
No one could have known
That an assault rifle would be used
To kill people
No one could have known
That a mentally ill person
Who fantasized about mass shootings
Would kill people
No one could have known
That their son
Would rob another boy,
Not yet two,
Of his parents,
If he only had a gun.
If everyone has an excuse
There is nothing that can be done
And another boy not yet turned two
Will have his life blown apart by a gun.
If, as has been said,
There are more guns than people
In the United States of America,
Then every gun must come
with an excuse included,
Spelled out or implied.
Or every bullet engraved,
So when it’s removed
From a parent or a child,
Each bullet explains why they died.
The litany of excuses:
From Uvalde
To Parkland
To Sandy Hook
To Columbine.
These are the reasons
why your children
And their parents
Had to die.
If excuses are like assholes
And everybody’s got one
What is our excuse
For permitting a gun?
Every day another tale told
Of bodies bleeding in the streets,
Rifle shots like fireworks,
Blood, corpses, and cops.
If excuses are like assholes
And everybody’s got one
What’s his father’s excuse
For giving him a gun?
Red, white, and blue,
So your rights are safe.
Never mind lives lost,
Liberty lost.
Pursuing a sniper
takes precedence
over the pursuit of happiness.
If excuses are like assholes
And everybody’s got one,
What is your excuse
For triggering a gun?
Image of sunset on lake by Tomasz Marciniak from Pixabay