(Whether Colorado, the Twin Towers, Afghanistan, Waco, Oklahoma City, or the hometown teacher, the psychosis has yet to be defined, let alone treated. Because THEY do not want it defined nor treated.)

Oh pity pity the latest of the innocent victims

and do not say out loud what they mean

because that would leave us without

our pity; how we bond in fright at the thought

that one day we surely will join them all;

a pity for a dead Pashtun child and a pity

for the homeless man killed for the recreation

of killing, and a great big pity for ourselves

who have to endure the utter hopelessness

of pity as the victims pile up and block all respite;

yes let us moan and groan again for some escape

from all this pity; seek answers from those authorities

on fear and hopelessness, for they always have

sexy answers to explain how it was someone not

like us who was responsible for our latest pity;

so tomorrow there will be a slight pause and a sigh;

then the next innocent victims will be targeted

and dispatched with the ease of a fingertip’s touch,

like a lover’s hand turned into a weapon and the answer

to a pity lewdly caressing the trigger of a desire;

well it is all part of this life and death that pushes us on,

with a gun to our backs that shoots bullets of pity

through the wall of those victims who have made

us victims, with no one to pity us as we move through

the dead on tiptoes, and do absolutely not look into their eyes.

Peter Buknatski

Montpelier, VT.

who have