beyond Covenant School. beyond assault weapons. beyond politics.  there’s a deep interplay with hell in the American social structure.  gun control, however sensible and sane, WON'T transcend it.  mass murder emerges from an unexamined, unaddressed dark spot in the collective human consciousness.  it can be described in one word: DEHUMANISATION.

not just a loner’s psychological flaw: but the denial of humanity (partial, any and all) to chosen "others." 

projection's fell phenomenon embedded in the social norm.

we have enemies.  we need them.  we kill them.

we go to war.

“wearing camouflage pants, a black vest and a backward red baseball cap, the assailant walks through rooms and hallways with a weapon drawn.”

the killer, whatever his specific “motive,” was playing war.  he had, in his mind and heart, dehumanised the occupants of Covenant School. this is the game...

the nation hooded one,

“USA! USA!”

played every day.

(why, say, can you hear

through our bomb bursted air

the national anthem fight song?

"glory hallelujah"

telling us "our god"

smote the "sinners"?)

*

mass shootings?  they’re everywhere.

when the "good guys with guns"

(that's "us" of course)

wage war,

noncombatants fall.

what could be simpler?

they die you see,

all those "bad" guys

laid out for us by Hollywood,

the Russians and Orcs and Klingons,

"savages" and "Injuns,"

"terrorists" and Muslims,

the yellow peril of slant-eyed Chinese....

and, say,

a bunch of nine-year-old children,

magically morphed into collateral damage.

*

we make this world ourselves,

you and me,

every time we follow
that
bouncing ball

(swaying into sprawl

domination affliction's
conflicted
pall);

the starless midnight

might made "right"

"siding"
a
memory holed

freedom to murder doled

exclusively souled

entirely imagined "history."

*

we make this world ourselves,
you see,

each time we close
our eyes

to proudly sing

'tis of "we"

(on our "inherited"
stolen "homelands"
of
Hawai'i,
Northern Mexico,
Puerto Rico,
Turtle Island,
and
Guam)

from see to seized sea...

(noosed around China)

eyeless teamed "Americans"

"we" as far
as
"we" can see;

crowned in "good"

just like our parents

taught us to be.

*

we make this world ourselves,

(all of "us,"

you see)

whenever we consent

to the loss
of
our
humanity.

*

- (a poem paraphrase

knitted from the writings of)

Robert C. Koehler

(and the once and future sensibilities

mused in an elf, himself )

unholy daze (an observance)

nigh on twenty years ago, the capital of capital's "freedom" fiefdom

unleashed an unlawful aggression avalanche

in a cruel and unprovoked war-for-profit

against the human beings in Iraq.

and still, rogue "democracy's"

distracted and distressed,

memory hole digressed,

"self" obsessed,

denial rivalled,

tribal bibled

red & blue enablers

crown thine

arrogant and unrepentant

international crime ridden

SuperPower addicted

domination afflicted

profit syphoned

nation hooded

warfare sanctioned

(election immune)

rampant and relentless

cult of control

enfolded

predilections "good."

hundreds of thousands dead,

some two million disabled,

nine million displaced,

countless people tortured,

traumatized,

or otherwise harmed

in ways unseen,

environmental devastation,

thievery, occupation,

and embrace of torture as policy

in a whole cloth pride plied

"exceptional" belied

War FOR and OF Terror;

an entire generation raised solely in only war.

(and thanks to punishing

the brave defenders of Fallujah

with depleted uranium,

a greater proportion

of birth defects seeded

in spreading freedom's

forsaken wake

than the lesser degeneration

of we-make-the-"rules based" disorder

managed to plant

in Hiroshima and Nagasaki

combined.)

*

do you honestly believe the stolen "homeland" has values?

(we could grade on a curve, say,

obviously leaving out

the capacity for loving

others as ourselves...)

*

why look, that fellow,

second from the right

in an Abu Ghraib

lineup.

he's had a recent haircut,

i expect.

but,

saints preserve us,

isn't he

the

Son of Man?

*

- Evan Hawthorn, a day after the ides of March, twenty years on