Thought on another mass shooting

With thoughts and prayers to spare
(enough, I’m told, for at least
two or three interruptions to our
regularly scheduled programming) we

pause to denounce evil, that scourge
whipping us from behind, preventing us,
powerless to stop the news, from playing more
than accompaniment to the church bells

recording another too-short story after
another, before changing the channel,
resuming play on the trivialities that
we dare not live without. While we live.