Something about gunfire.
Somebody says religion.
It’s an opportunity for the TV
to screen the same scenes,
the blinking blue and reds
of a bevy of cop cars
and the spooling headline
that assumes, then confirms
the worst.

And so strangers from all corners
spew their pennies’ worth
like bees fumbling for honey,
thousands of hypotheses
replete with exclamation marks,
the name of a Floridian city
swelling as a violet bruise
in the aftershock,
plunged into uninvited limelight.

The chief claims a ‘lone-wolf’ attack,
a man who loathed rainbows
then wiped his own life.
Talk swiftly turns to guns,
the increasing frequency
of wicked bloodshed,
the how, the why, the ‘this day and age’
and ‘the world isn’t safe’
and the nothing, still nothing is done.

Just one night before,
another tragedy,
a young singer shot
while signing their name,
fans left to clasp
the musical remnants
of a life snatched away,
the acerbic word ‘******’
in a nonsensical second.

Something so horrid
became something so common.
How many more gunshots
must shatter a night?
How many more families
must crumple like newspapers
peppered with headlines of the recently lost?
They are asking for answers.
We wait for them to come.