HOW DID IT HAPPEN?

How did it happen?
Sadly and soon we will know
how the five-year-old boy
playing on a swing

is transformed into a
Teflon-coated mass murderer
He was probably dehumanized over time
until his tortured soul
became armoured in hate like some
bionic superman.

It takes years of repression
holding rage in
shuntining it into hidden places
deep inside the body
beyond heart, beyond soul

Hidden from the light of laughter and love,
it festers, bubbles and ferments
until some little provacation
a rude waitress
an overdue bus

It boils over
hot as molten steel and
pours in to the nervous system
and the blood stream

The muscles reach
for the weapons,
the brain recycles its
contingency plans
and the erotic voilence erupts
spite and malice
expressed not with howls or screams
but with explosives and bullets

Each story is different
but the outline of the plot is the same
Too crazy to qualify for food stamps
but sane enough to be able to get a gun
just before the day when
the walls and floors of a school cafeteria
a library reading room, a church sanctuary
are bathed in viscera and blood

And each time we wonder
How did it happen?

Capitano Tedeschi

30

HOW DID IT HAPPEN? Copyright July 25, 2011 by Jamie Jacks