they say I could have killed you that night.
sometime in the night when you were
marching like a soldier down the concrete
between my building and the next,
like a child with firecrackers you popped
caps from the barrel of your toy into every
window and every door,
you danced like a drunken cowboy in the streets
of places called El Paso or Tombstone or
Dodge City in the old west,
laughing with terrible glee excited by the power
of destruction you rained on us poor citizen folk
with no sheriff to save us,
terrified we laid huddled on the floor close to
the wall hoping you would run out of bullets or focus
the madness on something less fragile than ourselves,
I was not brave or bold or courageous or anything
noble, I was afraid of you--afraid you would take my children
or wife--leaving me bare, naked and alone,
when I pulled the trigger the first time it wouldn't
move and I sputtered, the twelve gauge hung from
my shoulder doing nothing
I remembered the safety, pushed the
red button, squeezed double-0 buckshot into the air
somewhere in front of me, somewhere toward you,
somewhere definitely ment for you, and I hoped I
got you,
and I guess I did,
two days later you couldn't stand yourself anymore
and it just made sense to shove the barrel of the gun into
into the hollow of your mouth and splatter your brains
all over the papered wall of your baby's room,
maybe I did hit you, maybe you were wounded,
maybe getting shot at scared you too,
maybe somehow, for a moment, you got to be me
and it made you hate what I hated the way I hated it
and you just couldn't handle who you are, what you are,
any more,
maybe, but you're dead and I just don't give a shit.
J. Masuda © 2005