When God Is A Bullet
       

It begins with the middle finger
in the contingent air, the stench of cat piss
and a red stain that will never come out
of the carpets. Every plaid winter coat, a button in each
mother's pockets. The upholstery pillaged and dark
as the shadow on a blind-fold. The sofa mourns
the body's sullen form. A boy bouncing a ball.
First it was a cat's paw,
then the whole damn cat.
This is the boy bouncing the ball. This is the kid
Never invited—to a party, a club, a secret.
This is the scar of a battle lost to each
failed self. This is the red blemish
larger than the shrunken world.
                This is the boy picking at flesh
in a vacant parking lot, where pain feeds on pain.
This is not a movie, that pinging sound
that won't stop in his head is real.
This is the boy who knows no mother's love.
Tormented at 6, 10, 16 by self-loathing laced
with Ritalin. This is the boy looking at himself
                in the mirror—a stranger entering
a strange room. A jacked-up car. This is a storm
in a damaged town. The stones pounding the windows
in his head. This is the gun. This is the other dead kid.
This is the saddest crime in an empty room.
This is the blood not laundered. No evicting a dead son
from a sofa, a bosom. This is the coat. This is the puddle
some sloshed three-chinned politician stepped over.
This is our garden of shame. We are the junkies,
roaming the internet. The is the blood, it is cinematic.
                This is the blood. I am this boy. I hear hate gangling
up the flagpole in the schoolyard. Or at the Art sink where
he peed his pants. And we all laughed, yes we did.
I know this boy—the one that can't look us in the eye.
This ache brays and feeds. This is the weapon. All of us dug
in this hole so deep—A mother's plaid coat is a grave
to weep. This is the boy. We are the bullet.

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Copyright © 2020 Cynthia Atkins All rights reserved
from Still-Life with God
Saint Julian Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission