The Archetype of the Gun

We are hidden by oak

Touched by suburban piety

And surrounded on all sides

By thousands of pistols forming

Under the tulip tree

The archetype of the gun

Scattershot like what’s left

Of fall, nagging

And treacherous,

As we reconsider the migration

Up from the Bronx

Where a gun or knife

Is assumed universally

In every other hand

After too much beer

Or when the octave in apartment 3D

Can defeat the church bells

And silence the dogs

That hold the community

By the throat

And are therefore held

In chains as we are

Who are eager for Sleepy Hollow

And beyond to find

In our delicious fantasy

The guy who picks up

After his dog

Has a gun.

The one who always waves

With hat in hand

Has a gun.

The woman who tends

Her roses like a sentry

Has a gun.

He who came from Romania

Has a gun.

The woman born

Down the block

Has a gun.

The church-going family

With six children

Has a gun.

The guy with four grandkids

Who drives a school bus

Has a gun.

The man who moves himself

In a wheelchair

His hands shaking from Parkinson’s

Has a gun.

And even if this dead-reckoning

Is from the dead-records

Office, guns remain

A perfect deterrent

A cloud-based certainty

Dressed-up and fortified

By Google Maps

Showing neighborhoods

Resting smartly on their axis

Trees trimmed neat and tidy

And someone for sure

Will invent to our unease

A video game called

“Your Neighbor has a Gun”

So we can play

With abandon

Under a teardrop

Tulip tree in New City

Not far from Newtown

Where children and teachers died

While the gun-runners still

Crow that an armed society

Minds its Ps and Qs

So we must re-write

The frontier grammar

Again and ask

Why in the name

Of all things holy

Does the shadow remain?

Why this thing

This menacing arc

This archetypal gun?

Why has it become

Birthright and identity

A muscular myth

The literal OK Corral

Winning the West

Killing our shadow

A perpetual gun-running

Perfect mirror of a nation

Heard in old white men

Toxic brags

Boyish and boorish

War talk, fed

By an antique jingoism

That now puts Iran

On the end of our spear

With the same chorus that gave us

Iraq and Afghanistan

Wars without end

Celebrated mainly by

Daily suicides of our veterans

Not found on the digital maps

Or in the endless, liquid

Content feeds

That feed our brains

And we are twittering away

While the vultures

Circle overhead

Looking for road kill

Discarded bits

Of animal scrap, ripening.