<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Butler Lantern]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[https://butlerlanternnewspaper.wordpress.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[butlerlantern]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://butlerlanternnewspaper.wordpress.com/author/butlerlantern/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[De Rerum Natura with a&nbsp;Handgun]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p>Matt Cooper</p>
<p><em>Guest Poet</em></p>
<p>Lucretius said nothing<br />
In the Nature of Things<br />
About the bullets that would<br />
Make my friends disappear<br />
Like the oceans that used<br />
To Roll over the flat,<br />
Dormant plains here.</p>
<p>The Orwellian history of now,<br />
The Comets, Corrosion,<br />
The Cultural eutrophication<br />
And police officers murdering<br />
The sick, the elderly mad men<br />
and the Poor, have rotted<br />
This land through the years<br />
While automatic weapons<br />
Filled the supermarkets<br />
And children lost their tiny Minds<br />
To the whirling rusty Storms<br />
That are manufactured<br />
In the soot filled skies<br />
Which are only indigo<br />
By Illusion.</p>
<p>Though, I find myself unafraid<br />
Of spring twisters, flash floods,<br />
Droughts, grain famine and the<br />
Genocide of bees in comparison to<br />
The legalities of carbine rifles and<br />
.50 caliber munition rounds<br />
Constructed for the purposes<br />
Of wars and mass fratricide.<br />
(For what are we but a genus<br />
Of siblings fighting over the<br />
Definition of God?)</p>
<p>That the rot minded child<br />
In stunted growth may barter<br />
For 357 magnums with hair triggers,<br />
That a manic depressive might trade<br />
A few crinkled twenties<br />
For an army surplus hand grenade<br />
Used by a now dead soldier<br />
Who served in Khafi ‘91.<br />
That the monsignor could spend<br />
The collection plate donations<br />
On a pump action shotgun and<br />
Wipe out the choir boys at the<br />
Church of the Magdalene for<br />
Refusing to recite hail maries,</p>
<p>These things are why Heraclitus<br />
Might have gotten it right:<br />
Perhaps all the basic elements of life,<br />
Earth, the cosmos and the psyche have<br />
Derived themselves<br />
From fire.</p>
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