Johnny Poem by D A Phinney

Johnny's got a gun
He's hiding behind rocks in a vacant
Lot full of summer weeds
Half of the lot is a hole in the ground
Flanked by sentries of yellow and rust
Half of the hole is garbage
Big stuff
Bedsprings
Doors and screens
Tires
Refrigerators
Mirrors
Mirrors in shards
Wreckage, twisted, wrung out of life
Sinking into the world
The world cannot digest madness

Johnny's got a gun
The neighbor lady's walking by
The one upstairs with the twinbrats who yell
Who scream late at night
Because their first teeth are screaming
Ripping their way out
Biting through their own gums
Demanding that babies should decimate life
Before they swallow
And take death inside
To grow, to build on it
Why did she make them?
Why?

He sites on her middle
She walks slowly, slowly
With each single step he is pressing the trigger
More tightly
Squeezing her closer
And closer
And closer
To that fateful last instant
And only he knows
As he squeezes a little, a little
More, slightly,
With fate in his fingertip
She has but to run or to turn, stumble, shout
Or do anything different
But caught in his pattern
So onward she goes

And he starts as the gun jumps
To shout to high heaven
She takes one more step as she sees him too late
He sees how her front suddenly opens
Spewing fountains, spattering drops
That look like flowers painted on the pavement
Then some of her insides begin to cascade
Down her legs, then her knees hit
The sidewalk
All this he sees
As he cheers

Then he hears
The voice of his mother
As she calls him for Kool-Aid
Just like always.
He makes it a point
To step over the bodies
Sprawled on the sidewalk
All the way home