After Sandy Hook I thought things might get better.
Wasn't twenty dead little ones enough, Mr. Death?
Then the next rampage began.
Six down in the teary town of Isla Vista, Isla Trista.
"Americans are an exceptional people," we are told.
And if you're lucky, you will never meet one of these "exceptional people" and live a long life.
She had a bright smile and an impish grin.
She was what they used to call a "live wire" in bygone times, before the devolution of culture began.
Then she became leaky and lame in the grass,
silent and still—her smile ascendant in the starry night sky.
And the young man who turned off her juice?
So full of ideas, and such a good shot at close range!—truly remarkable among the mental low-riders of our time! And an American classic of self-inflicted mental disorder!
Let us sing the recessional for mass murder—we know it well now—in a country and a culture where reason and politicians retreat like cowards to the vestibules, exchanging nods and money; and the rings of power are in all the wrong hands.
Then let us turn the page that should never have been written in the book of the dead and weep for lost dreams and broken lives.
"Retribution," young man? "Retribution?"
Are you now even with people who did not know you
and never harmed you, who would probably have helped you had they known your "pain"?
Fame? Infamy!
Foul fiend, Flibbertigibbit of the Internet Age, Internet Rage,
jealous of friendship and female favor,
how dare you!
May your long, gloomy face descend into dark matter, banned forever from this world.
Behold the blighted landscape: One bad idea heaped on top of another in the American Junkyard of the mind.
Note: The performer may use some or all of the indicated music.
—By Louis Martin