I came to guns later
than most of
my neighborhood friends
As a child I had always
been drawn to
their steely simplicity
Playing cowboys and indians
police sirens scoring our movements
always a cowboy never an indian
The pistols of our youth
were cheap however
bruised rubber-bands balanced
On the tip of the index
snaked around the thumb
just as likely to zing as snap
A lesson in tension
and its erratic nature
we learned early
Later eyes arrowed down range
tangerine thimbles of foam
plugging my ears
The weight of the thing
surprised me
the metal azoic and leaden
But the trigger
afire with airy sundering
at the slightest touch
Punching hole after hole
in paper-thin silhouette
until fingers of dusk bled through
Twenty yards farther
a series of logs strung
up like the convicted
Shuddered with near misses
each brass-sleeved projectile
carving out splinters with every bullseye
and the sound
Not the rolling combustion of thunder
which in its arbitrary might
judges all men colorless
But a hollow crash
an ax-head upon dry ash or pine
a process that
Burdens muscle but
eases the mind
lost in repetition
And death becomes process
as easy as pointing
a Glock 19
Down a cement-saddled street
one shot or seventeen
the weight of the first blaze
Equivalent to that of last
a boy crumpled
in the bizarre chaos of
Jumbled limbs
maybe the weight
comes after
Hunters forced
to haul a lifeless buck
behind them out of the woods
So too should the shooter
haul the lifeless frame
of the slain