Another Grim American Valentine Day—Murfin Verse

Here we go again...

My Facebook news feed predictably erupted on last night with the news of yet another grizzly mass school shooting.  This one was at Michigan State University in East Lancing.  Three are dead and five others critically injured.  The gunman, a 43 year old ex-con with no known connection to the campus was found dead of a self-inflicted wound hours later.  At this writing his motives are unknown.  Perhaps he was just celebrating Valentine Day in a now time honored tradition.

Post gun massacre flow chart.

We have been through this kind of thing so often the responses were almost entirely predictable—horror and anguish followed by sputtering outrage and the lingering sense of hopelessness that when the last funerals and memorials are over the moment will pass, nothing will change, and we will slide back into numbness.

Target company made perfect modern American Valentine's Day gift....

After the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass murder in 2018I was moved to write.

Three Holes in the Valentine Heart

A target company made the perfect modern American Valentine's Day gift....

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!

Crosses and flowers commemorated the NIU mass murder victims.
 

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 students and staff after being evacuated from the killing scene.

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 Danniel’s cleavage,

            any damn thing…

 

—Patrick Murfin