The Beryl Sea

The beryl sea, a tube of molten glass
Rolled like sheet music.
Like tumblers of a lock, sea-foam hammers
Dip and soar, paw the air.
Watch the mincing surf glide on piano wire feet.
A key turns in a sun-scoured cylinder,
A secret drawer opens on bubbling sand
And the sea swallows its glossy tongue.

Grendel

I was still reeling from Sandy’s punch when the Sandy Hook left hook shook. Like the Double Monster in the famous Beowulf saga: Grendel-and-his-Mother. (Ancient sagas are the only true histories and they seem to be coming true true lately with alarming frequency–like Noah’s Fludde in “Moonrise Kingdom.”) The “ Grendel-and-his-Mother” monster attacked a school and ate 20 children and 6 adults. It swallowed them in the tips of close to a thousand rounds of hollow point military ammunition (expensive little suckers but luckily he was a rich kid and could afford the “best”) purchased by the doting mother for her son “to bring him out of his shell” (out of his Grendel-cave in the dark basement where he dithered with computers). When it comes time for every young man to make his impression on the world isn't it his mother who supplies the ammunition?

The AR-15 assault rifle: America’s technical solution to the problem of the “other.”