By The Numbers

An ancient poem, and one we’re recording for the new CD.  I mentioned it a couple ofposts ago. 

I thought when I found it that it was written after Columbine, but it’s in files on the laptop that go back to 1999 or so.  So it’s an old piece; not super old for me, since I still routinely perform a couple of poems I wrote in the 1980s, but old enough.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One aching
head, one steady eye;
one Glock, one sporting
rifle held in reserve, one combat stance —

two hands clenched, two
ears plugged to block the stun, two
hours before final dark, two faces
inside this boy facing off at last.

Three sirens, then more;
rising soundtrack for Three Fates dancing
around three bodies lying still
three stories below his stand.

Four times four makes sixteen
years that have passed
since his mother spent four times four hours in hard labor
bringing this young gunner out to see

this five fold world of land and sea and air
and daily rot and failing will.
He thinks: there are six sides to every story,
and six times six again if you add all of your own. He keeps calculating:

seven miles to the nearest hospital,
seven times seven rounds left;
eight doors from the lower floors out onto this roof;
eight bombs set to blow when the knobs are turned.

When the snipers finally find him
he lets the nine millimeter fall and
seizes hold of the long gun,
thrilled to be not yet dead, waiting for them to open the doors and die as they come for him,

twisting around
before the first door blows, casually aiming before smoke can obscure the target,
already knowing the end result: they will wait ten minutes
after their last shot is fired to be sure it’s safe to bring him down.

And then someone will tally the bodies and the reasons,
the number of hazardous songs that he knew,
all the things that someone should have noticed.
Someone will have the nerve to say it doesn’t add up.

He would say that it always adds up, but he would also remind us
that some learn to count by irrational numbers,
working their way through ragged sequences
until they’re sucked into a Fibonacci swirl that is already starting again somewhere,

the wheels turning click after click after click,
until it’s time to blow again,
until the sound of those counters
again finds its voice in another boy’s head: one, two, three …