The weight of the pull (a poem)

Saturday, February 15, 2025

This poem was written in reflection, in sadness for those who suffer violence. It does not glorify destruction, nor revel in its mechanics. It only observes—how violence is shaped, how it moves, how it leaves nothing the same.

Hundreds of Yards Per Second

Full of pop—whiz, bang,
yippee-ki-yay!
More than a rock,
the power of the sun
in the palm of your hand.

This power—
for each one,
a string of mini-world enders.

In a mag,
sixteen assembled.

Overkill.

The arrangement,
the slide,
the barrel,
the fire.

The strike—
a viper.
Bite. Snap.
Fangs deep,
coiled,
lethal spring.
Punched down,
the pinch and sting.

A wake of venom,
a dirge to sing.
Fade to black.
Bell tolls
on the Fourth of July.

Catastrophic.
Nothing the same again.

A wild colt,
a Desert Eagle,
wolverines,
a honey badger.

Unbroken,
unyielding,
teeth bared.

The ones running,
the scramble,
the Mad Hatter,
the smoking herald.

Perched high,
elevated snipes,
calling out positions.

The metal jacket,
the straight and narrow—
precision instruments
for the end of a sentient.

In justice,
the injustice
never just is.

What have we done?
To unleash this?
To make anyone a soldier
with a single purchase?

Of gods and men,
this stand-off,
irreconcilable—
mercury and water.

Legacy war,
latent fighting powers,
passed down,
inherited
like a sickness.

The crushed spirit,
looking for a way out.

Upended realities,
the stopping power.

Everything changed—
before and after.

Bearing witness
to the end of things.

Machined to make it—
malignance,
maleficent.

The consequence—flipped over,
the upside down, creeping over.
The lesser,
left to sit in the corner.

A mechanism, a means—engineered.
A huge cost,
the expenditure of my soul
as ammunition.

Flying off the handle,
into hate’s oblivion—
a flash,
a moment,
a dramatic end.

The velocity,
the trajectory,
the range,
the environment.

Hundreds of yards per second.