Something Isn'T Right

A chorus 
of raw throats
rasp out warnings 
then quieten, leaving
an edgy silence twitching
on the lips of a morning
or riding the ticker 
moving across the bottom
of a television screen.
Something isn't right.

There's an unease
that seems to be
leaking out of lesions 
in the carnage to come,
a slow festering 
as if all life was waiting
for a finger 
to squeeze the trigger
of a loaded gun.

And yet
good people
go about their lives
as they normally do, 
saying their prayers, 
helpless, riled or for some,
not wishing to care, 
though somewhere,
hidden in a hollow
at the back of a head, 
a dark is stirring
from its sleep,
getting ready to rise
from its bed. Elsewhere,
across a nation,
more and more screams 
become stuck 
in the throats of the dead.
Something isn't right.
Copyright © | Year Posted 2023

Poem

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Turner Avatar
April 18, 2023 at 6:32 AM
Honestly Paul I believe we have passed the tipping point and we are on the way down. A really good read. I hope you are well.
Willason Avatar
April 18, 2023 at 7:14 AM
Hope its not the tipping point...we have a deep affinity with Americans and feel troubled and sad with the degree of violence, particularly mass shootings, that are reported. I wrote this poem out of such feelings. Thanks mate, valued
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