Taxonomy Of Mass Shooters

We need a “mass shooter taxonomy:”

(A classification of this thing

Ubiquitous in our economy)

Here I will try to begin it naming

1st they’re mostly elaborate suicides

These people kill when they want to die

If they survive they wanted to choose sides

To some fantasy identity ply

2nd they are the voiceless’s message

When their tweets, posts, memes & screeds are ignored

They feel they need a murderous dressage 

To break through all the ennui of the bored

3rd, & more specific’lly they want

To say something about some injustice 

(Whether real or imagined) they flaunt 

Murderously, their social caprice 

Some are simpleton racists who despise

Blacks, Latinos, Asians & others more

Than they enjoy all of living’s supplies

(They create a fantasy of race war)

I need to quickly add explanations 

Of the commercially motivated

& the Bigger Thomas iterations 

Not many, but difference is noted

Not a few of them choose to blame women

Certainly a form of misogyny 

Thinking that life relationships owes them

(This alienation is unholy)

This is all toxic masculinity 

Where we men blame the sexual obverse 

(Oft’ “performative femininity”

Women’s social incentives perverse)

I should have started with the bullying 

That we think begins with one tyrant

(Truthfully we’re all participating

“‘Favorites’ is a form of violence”)

Let me circle back to the suicides 

(That are to me incomprehensible 

Mental Health sometimes sanity elides

A predictable reaction awful)

Today’s society’s expecting

Or demanding too much of human souls

People think they should be fame producing

Simulacrum of Humanity’s goals

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Truism Sonnet

The people who mind really don’t matter

Concerned predominantly with themselves

They want their own idea of better

They refuse to accept what’s on the shelves

The people who matter, don’t really mind

They accept all our flawed humanity

Whether they agree or not, they are kind

These people are less caught by vanity

If you accept & internalize

This little chiasmus, you will be fine

You’ll not other people have to despise

For the will choose their own personal line

Know that the final barometer

Is just your own personal measure

Age’s Shipwreck Sonnet

I find myself without any rudder
Floating through this existence of mine
There are shores & rocks that make me shudder
But if I look up heaven is divine

I find myself without any ballast
Bobbing high atop life’s meaninglessness
I row frantically, my hands are calloused
I float a silken sea of seamlessness

I find myself without a sail or keel
A survivor in an open dinghy
I long for youth’s intense meaningful feel
As I eat survival rations stringy

If you live long enough you see the sea
& its many watersheds start to flee

Good Friday Sonnet

I sit down after walking around Queens
Exhausted by sensory overload
Ev’rything has hidden meaning it seems
(Once you’ve untangled humanity’s code)

The people walking from & to worship
All seemingly on different wavelengths
Though it is one deity who turns up
(Seems to be able to ignore my angst)

On this Good Friday some walked from their mosques
Others traveled to Saint Sebastion’s church
(We who Religious traditions had tossed
Went & were simply shopping for merch)

This place is hardly a destination
But it is humanity’s salvation

My Social Media Addiction

I need to let go of anger’s dime bag
Social media is not unlike dope
While high, my eternal spirit will sag
& I’ll never be able to find hope

All social media is fentanyl
Or the emotional OxyContin
I have to remember that it will kill
The human honesty that is within

So as you read this on your Instagram
(Or Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, or Tumblr)
Keep in mind that the better me should scram
& use the world of journals: remember?

If I could spend 24 hours without this
Thinking’s ability would be the gift

Fast Food Jazz Hands Sonnet

Jazz Hands in front of President Lincoln
Re-enact our cultural heritage
We think it was “darkies” we were punkin’
But it was ourselves that we disparaged

We thought we could belittle the minstrel
But it was ourselves blackface diminished
For America’s the joke cultural
Even when “Amos & Andy” finished

For the minstrel show that we once laughed at
Has become “Pravda,” state television
Operated by Fox-Securitate:  
The free-market’s pathetic reduction

In the curtained wings of the world’s grand stage
Our nouveau-riche land is showing its age

An Ode to Our Bubble

I am easily distracted by life
Mesmerized by the detritus cast off
By the dizzying rotation of strife
In this way I devolve: become a sloth

12/30/18

I naïvely attempt to comprehend
All the supercharged notifications
Contemporary society sends
For its momentum’s continuations

Why do the shenanigans of others
Strike notes that resonate with my soul?
Mayhem, thievery as well as murders
Show me people’s failed ways become whole

With increasing frequency I see
Vaguely conformist people act out
& bourgeois acceptability flee
Killing peace’s opportunities stout

How does a man or woman deputized
To enforce our pecuniary rules
Come to commit these things we demonize
Though they have been furnished all of the tools?

Are these defects in individuals
Or is there a systemic problem?
If the problem is particular souls
Why d’we have so fucking many of them?

How do common problems metastasize
To the 1st deadly sin of homicide?
Why do people insanely fantasize
That killing others will restore their pride

Mornings, I greedily turn on my phone
Looking for the world’s outrages current
Today, see how a man gunned down his home
Then spend the day plotting how we’re diff’rent

I should look for the similarities
Between the homicidal & myself
(& not the curious specificities
But psychological traits on our shelfs)

For the man who kills his whole family
Is, 1st & foremost, a man just like me
That something has modified insanely
(I’ll investigate how this came to be)

But my smartphone is designed* to keep me
Judging & distancing myself from him
& in this way I will never truth see
For without understanding, life is grim

So now please help me to inventory
The physical reality of life:
Not covered with mythology hoary
But with hints at the meanings for this strife

Remind me that the pain is just friction
Ev’ry physical being must endure
It’s the obverse of orgasm’s diction
That we might get to enjoy, to be sure

Some cleverly attempt to configure
There is metaphysical unity
Where “all is part of a perfect whole,” sure
(I cannot buy that “non-duality!”)

12/31/18

I don’t need the evil to create good
Innate in my being is right & wrong
I know that “right” is the action I should
Try to commit as my daily life’s small song

So I must confess all the ironies
Of this long poetic meditation
About people who overthink theories
But, sadly, my style is rumination

This doggerel will not ever surface
In the journals that real poets respect
For these are simply thoughts in cursive
That good editors clamor to reject

But still I tap all my fingers counting
Out ten syllable vocabulary
In which I try to add thoughts amounting
To something that has some meaning to me

& if you have read this far along, thanks
Because this is merely the digression
Of an old man looking for other cranks
Who are disappointed with depression

This interminable stack of stanzas
About a human’s vision’s raiment
Is hardly an extravaganza
But is just another entertainment

*programmed