Pundits are already
finding the silver lining in the Coronavirus year—the lock down and school closings gave us a respite
from the kind of mass gun murders that
had become numbingly routine in the previous decade. Of course that didn’t take into account the rise in urban street crime shoot ‘em ups that have drenched many of our cities
in Black and Brown blood. That is
something somehow entirely different
even to many white and Anglo anti-gun violence crusaders. Be that as it may, the pause in those
other mass shootings has abruptly
ended as vaccinations have spread, infections, and deaths gone down
and states and municipalities have rushed to open
up and return to something that seems normal. Part of normal includes what is spit out of the ends at the barrels of assault weapons.
In
one week we have seen the Georgia
attacks on women, Asians, and massage parlors that left eight
dead and the Boulder, Colorado supermarket
attack that has claimed ten. In the
first case the assailant was a young white man who was “having a bad day” and targeted those
who apparently tempted his sexual purity. Local and even Federal authorities seem to have a hard time charging the shooter
with a hate crime although victim communities—Asians and women—clearly
understand it to be.
In
Colorado the shooter was an apparently Muslim
man. One suspects that authorities
will have less trouble labeling him a hate crime offender and plainly calling
the incident what it clearly is—an act
of terrorism.
In
both cases the offenders—we won’t
bother with the nicety of calling them “alleged”—were
captured alive unlike many un-armed Blacks in routine traffic stops or mental
health crisis. And in both cases
there are very loose restrictions on gun ownership and in the case of Colorado allows open-carry. In fact just days earlier a state court overturned an assault weapon ban that had been enacted in the wake of other Centennial
State atrocities.
In the aftermath of both shooting, the same old pattern of responses have rolled out—public outrage and demands for immediate action, moves by Democrats including President Joe Biden and members of the House and Senate vowing to enact legislation this time, and the gun lobby and their bought-and-paid-for Congressional mouth pieces telling us how they mourn the victims but that the rest of us have to calm down and not act in haste. The gun nuts are confident that once again outrage will fade after a few weeks and we can all return to the normal of deadly weapons for all who want them in the name, of course, of freedom.
Over
the years I have written poetry
often, far too often, after explosions
of gun violence, mass murder, and domestic terrorism in this country. It feels like there is hardly anything else
to say—no new insights, outrage, or grief.
The parade of atrocities seems never ending, as does our by now ritualized and inadequate responses. But
however familiar they become, we cannot allow ourselves to be numbed by them. We cannot lay aside our outrage and our anger
not only against the individual
perpetrators, but those who encourage,
abet, and arm them. We must resist the culture
that fosters violence and hate and
take positive action—far more than
ever before—to stop it.
Almost
two years ago after yet another outrage—the El Paso Walmart attack—I trotted out just some—not all—of the verse I composed after previous events.
Gun violence has all too frequently been my poetic topic over the years.
You will be forgiven if you
can’t even remember some of the incidents—there have been far too many of them
and the blur over time.
Ritual
Bloodletting, Breast Beating, and Blaming
October 1, 2015
In the Wake of
Umpqua Community College Killings
Grief stricken
families, victims, and survivors
are the bullies
the launchers of vast, dark
conspiracies
and the gun worshipers and fantasy
world heroes
the mewling, pitiful victims.
Step right over
the victims.
Don’t slip on the blood.
Remember what is Holy and Sacred.
…Or we will kill
you.
—Patrick Murfin
He Who Shall Not
Be Named Here
November 27,
2015
After Colorado
Springs
No! He is not Old John Brown
come round again
no matter the wild eyes
and wilder beard.
The unborn will
not rise up
and arm themselves,
to wreck vengeance on
the women who carry them
and anyone who ever
had a kind word or thought
for them.
God is not on
his side
just as He/She/It
is not on the side
righteous trigger happy cops
tempted by the backs
of Black young people.
Just as Allah is
not on the side
of fanatics in Syria, Iraq, and
Paris.
He will never
savor martyrdom,
ride to his own hanging
on his casket,
only the long, lonely oblivion
of maximum prison hole.
Despite his
yearnings
a nation will not march to war
with his name ringing in song
on hundred thousand lips.
With luck,
rivers of blood
and mountains of corpses,
families turned against families,
the land laid waste,
will not be his legacy.
With luck.
—Patrick Murfin
What Doesn’t
Stay In Vegas
October 3, 2017
What happens in
Vegas doesn’t stay there.
It oozes under
the front door
of that little
house in Tennessee
leaving a nasty
stain in the carpet
that will last
generations.
It drips from
the empty desk
in the high school office
where the phone rings unattended
next to a famed family photo
and a jar of M & Ms.
It is tangled in
the nets
of that Alaska trawler
spilling on the deck
and splattering those rubber boots.
It has to be
wiped from the table
of that Disneyland café
by some other harried waitress
before it spoils some child’s
special day
or gets on Snow White’s costume.
It pools by the
council’s table
in a San Diego courtroom
the empty chair
unable to represent
the mother of three.
It cannot be
washed from
the filthy hands
of every politico
who took gun pushers’ cash
and kissed the ass of every
fetishist wanking himself off
to violence porn and hero
fantasies.
—Patrick Murfin
An actual Valentine Day target sold at gun stores, Target audience? Incels and misogynists?
Three Holes in
the Valentine Heart
Chicago
1929
Toddlin’ Town
rat-a-tat-tat,
just Jazz Age juice and justice,
Tommy guns talkin’
fedoras flying,
mugs massacred,
wanna-be eye doc,
grease monkey
garage gore gone.
“Only Capone
kills like that.”
Cool beans!
Gangsters!
Northern
Illinois University 2008
Gunman on
campus!
Good-guy grad student
gone goofy
lecture hall lesson
in shot gun blasts
and Glock gotchas.
Campus cops
closing in,
one last round
under the chin,
oblivion.
Twenty-three
down,
sixteen shot,
five dead and,
oh yeah, the perp.
Is that all?
Piker! Ain’t no Virginia Tech!
hardly worth the weeping and
wailing
all those vigils and candlelight!
And the NRA says
all those pussy students
who didn’t pack their own heat
should have OK corralled it.
Nothing to see
here,
move along.
Marjory
Stoneman Douglas High School 2018
Crazy Cruz kid
had issues,
gas mask, smoke grenades,
and a handy AK-47
extra magazines just in case.
Shoot, pull fire
alarm.
spray death, kick in doors,
spray death, repeat.
Efficient.
Thoughts and
prayers
out the wazoo today.
Blame tomorrow.
Not me, not us.
Unpreventable.
Look….a squirrel
or Stormy Danniels’ cleavage,
any damn thing…
—Patrick Murfin
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