what is worse
a picture of a *****
or a picture of a gun
for some reason
we have it in our heads
a **** is wrong
but somewhere someone
is thinking how cool
it would be to shoot someone

they say it's a god-given right
a necessity, meant to be
a part of the American life

but tell me, do you know what it's like
to have to the cold steel of a barrel
pressed between your innocent eyes?

I’ve written enough small poetry
to start a nuclear war.
Do you want to die in traffic
behind the wheel of your car? Or in yr rodeer camp next fall.

Control eludes us. The hero
loses urinary control, the unified nation
loses missile control, lost my timepiece, lost my metronome,
now my music is ethereal as an archangel’s.

No owl hoots or duck quacks
or squirrels *******
or spiders spanning rampikes.
The floccinaucinihilipilification of nature.

No greater tragedy than a tipping
point that tests the hero’s gullibility, complicity,
self-control, comity, sense of humor
which is the only remedy not to hate those in authority.

Them guys with guns at the Michigan state house,
fat bearded tattooed ******* white bros.
Norsemen, Crusaders, Vikings, Britons.
For despair there is no forgiveness. Peace out.

Nuclear mischief, mad Man’s most incandescent bloom
and the devil who exists to carry the load
when we misbehave and fight among ourselves.
I wake up to my skin boiling off my bones.

Humor is the only remedy, or is ardor the best way forward.
We’ll see how things work out in the next generation.
The same diverse, spoiled, unpatriotic revolutionaries as at the nation’s
      beginning
trying to reverse the future, making phone calls to get out the vote in
      Georgia, hating the desert for having no water.

Events keep piling up,
the future depends on ourselves.
Conflict is inevitable and in this conflict power must be challenged by
      power
so err on the side of patience, perseverance and impermanence.

I cried at Field of Dreams.
It wasn't Dad I was thinking of --
it was you --
us, lobbing that ball
back and forth.
  
You blossomed:      Specht Fans 11 …  Tuesday night.
Fireballer Bob Specht struck out 11 and allowed only two hits in leading the BPO Elks to a 4-0 victory over Lee Plumbing.

You were ten.

You threw so hard
my hand burned even with a catcher's mitt and sponge.
  
You stalled;
others caught you.
Age fifteen, and your career was done.
  
You were musical;
played trombone in the marching band.
  
School? You did well,
but were never really exceptional.
You defied conventions,
went to extremes.
  
In college, it wasn't enough to just protest;
you had to join the SDS,
to always be daring the police to arrest you.
  
You took ******, mescaline, speed, *******.
  
You were cynical, negative, moody;
scorned all masks and indirection.
What you offered was a ruthless honesty:
in a fake and superficial world,
no small commodity.
You married --
Justice of the Peace, no friends or family.
Seemed happier.
It didn't last;
you divorced.
  
Talked of suicide, occasionally.
I argued it to be a misunderstanding
of emotions' relativity:
Only the starving understand
the exquisite flavor of plain bread.
  
You wandered.
Work took us farther apart.

You became obsessed with a married woman
who had no intention of leaving her husband.
  
Injured your eye in a car accident.
The doctor prescribed corticosteroids.
  
I fell in love and got married.
You were best man.
  
And then:
P.M., May 20, 1981: A body was discovered in the kitchen of the second floor apartment at 68 High St. by the building's owner, Joseph Albertson. Mr. Albertson positively identified the body as that of Robert Edward Specht, the apartment's leasee.  The deceased had received a gunshot wound to the head. A .25-caliber Beretta revolver registered to the deceased was found one foot from the body. The substantial damage to the face and head, consistent with a very close firing range, the lack of any signs of intrusion or struggle, and the written materials (identified as being in Mr. Specht's handwriting) found next to the body, indicate that the wound was self-inflicted.

You'd left a note: "No hope of finding love. Refuse to live without."

Was it the accident, the drugs
that made you less communicative?
My marriage? Some inner-driven change?
  
Would that I could have eased your pain.
You were thirty-one.

Another gun, another shot, another bullet flies
Another place, another wound, another person dies

Another paper’s headline, another claim of disbelief
Another time of sorrow, and another family’s grief

In the aftermath of ******, it’s another call to prayer
Another prelude to inaction in a land that doesn’t care

I pray that we can live a life devoid of death and fear
I pray to stop the slaughter in this barbaric atmosphere

I pray the hate stops flying.  I pray the threat soon ends
I pray for all my children; I pray for family and for friends

I pray for love, I pray for hope, I pray the killings cease
I pray for you, I pray for me, I pray for lasting peace

Though God may have the upper it’s not God’s hand on the gun
Give a weapon to a demon and a wicked deed gets done

We have armed the devil’s legions, and oh how he is smirking
It’s time to change the gun laws. It’s clear the prayers aren’t working