Upon Learning What the AR in AR-15 Stands For

A poem written in response to the Boulder, Colorado shooting

Photo by Bexar Arms on Unsplash

Death by any other name
is still the sound of a siren,
and this conversation is a gun
being fired into the barrel
of another gun.

Maybe this Assault Rifle
never assaulted anyone,
it took its orders
from the apple pie
cooling in the window,

and if you pressed a microphone
to the lips of the dead,
asked their opinion
on the difference
between cause and effect

the silence would wake you up at night,
because in the absence
of their voices,
you could hear the blood drip
like the sound of the largest clock

ticking beneath the surface
of every second you ignore,
assuming the next one
and the next one and the next one
will be on the other side of the door,