tonight I stood in my bedroom and shed my clothes
to stand naked, pink and hairy and supposedly innocent
before the tall mirror on my closet door

and listened to reports of the latest mass shooting
this time in California but like the last time
in Colorado and those other times in Newtown

and Charleston and Seattle and New York and on
and on and on and who cares where within these
United States of Hysteria where guns are a right

while nakedness is sinful and hopeless flesh
is always a target and I, in this bare room,
as bare as any target, as any trembling soul

alone in this torn world could be, wonder
about the other just plain folks who might take aim
and mow us down, tear us down, mow us down,

tear us all apart, tear us into tattered parts
and so we are
not whole