Shape and Substance

December 2015

I am the bullet, born this eternal instant,
in the firing chamber, yearning for a target.

A battlefield, perhaps, where opposing truths
meet in lethal contest to prove that both are lies

or a theater where a hundred viewers
file in for a fantasy they will live but never see

or an urban street where young men
wager their prowess and forfeit their futures

or a sanctuary where scattered souls
lie limbs akimbo, bleeding into Bibles

or an office party, co-workers pausing from their labor,
a caring to which they will not return?

I do not care. Such matters are too wonderful for me;
I do not contemplate the ironies of hate.

I am born of explosion, the spark of firing pin to primer
ignited propellant, corkscrew rifling, spinning free, subject only

to equations of velocity, deceleration, and range,
fifty-five grains, at thirty-two hundred feet per second.

E=mc2 makes
a memorable impression on flesh or bone.

I am the bullet.
Are you the target?