HOW MUCH IS 'MASS'?
Randall Camden Stemple

My feed is a travesty a real-day modern tragedy and

amongst all the cute photos of cats and dogs and all my sports team’s losses

exists a catalog of all gun violence, an epidemic that crosses

across this nation, rich or poor, black or white, or any color under the sun so that

when running an errand you might get gunned down by a person with a problem,

against you, against the store, against the world, or something at their very core

we don’t discuss it, we believe it a chore, and so when a bug becomes a feature

all that’s left to argue is nomenclature; how many bodies need to be stacked

for it to be considered ‘mass’?

 

Do we just consider holes in the ground and piles of ashes 

or do we consider the masses of others? The wounded and the maimed

the traumatized and frightened whose lives will never again be the same.

How much does one need to limp to claim their lives irrevocably changed

by someone with a gun and too much pain?

 

What we need is a scale something one to ten, then

take all your pain all your trauma all your shattered dreams

crunch the numbers, run them through a machine, a formula, the bar is a seven

anything below and you just have to pretend that everything is fine, that it’s normal, 

that you didn’t just go through something horrible.

While seven through ten will be casualties for the purpose of statistics,

we will take a holistic approach to categorizing the slaughter

from major to minor to barely a bother 

with so many instances they smother your empathy and innocence 

till all that’s left is mechanical precision 

just the cost of doing business.

 

This may seem insensitive or at least in poor taste but considering the waste

of life and of futures, we should at least use their deaths to best inform and educate

to illuminate the problem and the paths that branch into the gloom.

But we don’t and we won’t, we would rather forget it. 

We scream about what is right and respecting the dead and

scold all the vultures and carrion birds preventing any conversations from being heard.  

 

I would argue that my system and scale are truly important, truly transformative

of the horrid discourse surrounding this plague.

I can see the messages and thoughts and prayers you have amassed.

Let's see how many remain after a month has passed.