The Parkland Arcane

by Jack Hirschman

1.

Guns and money,
Guns and money.
This isn’t about
Dempsey & Tunney.
It’s about the religion
of the very unfunny
United States and the
17 dead in Parkland

at the hands of Santa
Cross* with that metallic
white supremacist look,
Saint Nikolas Cruz, who
hates Jews, Blacks, and
announced himself as
a future school shooter
even before he pulled

the trigger, (go figger,
niggas and kikes),
it’s all about stukas,
lugers and dykes;
it’s all about lonely
reclusively angry
adherence to evil
websites, and

2.

you and your more
than 700 military bases
in virtually every country
on earth, your hypocrite
lies, your two-party
game, the shame of one
with the name of the
Capitalist Party.

Hands up! Salute
the dead chief’s living
apprentice to the music
of the opportunes that
sound like, “Here you
can do anything to
make a billion, screw
anyone on the way,”

massacre at a Vegas
concert or at Florida
schools or schools in
other states as well.
No weeping. Guns
don’t cry. They come
from history’s slave-
owning arsenals, of

cowboys, homegrown
gangsters, mafia dons;
and we got the 2nd,
we wear the 2nd,
we unfurl the 2nd
like show-offs of
the freedom to buy
an AR-15 blockbuster

as early as 18 years
of age, and there are
Blacks for it as well
because they know
that in this race-sick
society they’ll need
self-protection from
the cops, who’re

continuously and
on every street,
in every store,
at every opportunity
dissing, frisking
and nixing their
brothers and
sisters galore.

3.

And how ironic the 17
should have been killed
at a high school named
Douglas in Black History
Month, when the words –
for the most part still
unknown and unread –
of Frederick Douglass

underlie the atrocity
committed by a broken
punk nazi sympathizer
who spent his time,
when not shooting off
his loudmouth guns,
coozing with whores,
kinky Hannah & Nina,

on the MLIF website
before going to sleep
with his Trumpy Bear,
dreaming of a Tweet
from the President
himself so he can read
Its secret message
between the heils.

Jack Hirschman, named San Francisco’s poet laureate in 2006, a pillar of the arts and activism, has published 50 books of poetry and essays and can be reached via [email protected].

* Santa is short for Saint Nicholas, and Cruz means Cross in Spanish, so Santa Cross refers to Nikolas Cruz. – ed.