! Gun Nuts Poem by Michael Shepherd

The FBI has considerably extended
the list of those whose mental health
makes it unwise for them to purchase guns…

that means, I guess, those whose state
was discovered before they bought
their first, or second, or fourteenth gun..

but what of those whose mental health
is dangerously unbalanced, after
they buy their guns and use them?

who graduate enthusiastically
from air-rifles aimed at beer cans,
to planning how to gun down
their teachers or their fellow students?

then there are those who fight heroically
throughout a campaign; but return,
as veterans from Vietnam, to a ruined mental health?

or – let’s be quite contentious here –
suppose a whole people, let’s say Texans
or Republicans, or Afghans, or some extremist sect,
want to fight each other; and
an impartial expert called in by
the United Nations (uh?) declares
that neither side are fit in mental health
to buy, or to be issued, any guns? …