Bullets

Your choice
is simple: the bullets
will always fly, so you can choose
to be behind the bullet,
or in front of it.

Of course you could choose
to be the bullet
that is neither behind nor before,
that does the wet work
and cares not for choices
while faithfully doing its job,
but the whorl of your eyes
tells me that’s not for you,
so choose:
where will you stand
when they fly? Will you stand behind,
admit your love
of the firm trigger in your hand,
the sense of control, answers
delivered so swiftly?  Or will you stand in front
and admit your love for the bullets
and the guns, the sense of surrender
to answers received so simply?

You protest
and say you can always stand aside,
but tell me you truly believe
you’ll always be able to stand aside.
Tell me you don’t know now
where you’ll prefer to stand
when the whistle comes
to tell you the bullet is flying.

Tell me you think there’s a chance
you won’t have to choose
and I will show you
how the dirt below your feet laughs
through its long and heavy
load of blood at the thought of such a thing,
choking on elegies, recalling funerals,
mad men staring past the heaps of dead
before them, the bodies piled
and lined up for interment,
the old who will not speak
of how they chose to live
by standing behind the bullets,
knowing they could have chosen
to stand before but for their precious lives
yet unlived.

Tell me you can stand aside
from that giving and taking
and I will show you how it feels
to have the choice taken from you
and find that wherever you end up,
behind the gun or in front of the bullet,
you’ll feel like the bullet
has found you.