The only thing, sings Wayne La Pierre,
“that stops a bad guy with a gun
is a good guy with a gun” –
a song of good and bad that’s certainly fun
at the Cineplex, but less so in open air
EVP of the NRA is WLP,
an intense, insistent man whose voice
promotes utterly unrestricted choice
of weaponry, but leaves us the invoice
for the cost, in lives, love, and therapy.
What you see in Wayne La Pierre
is the balladeer of bullet and bandoleer,
with rhetoric uncompromisingly clear
and a mask-like, macho veneer –
an apostle of assault-gun laissez-faire.
What you don’t see is his terrible fear –
of demons in a streetlight’s glare,
of crackling conspiracies everywhere,
and of himself, open, laid bare –
a terrible, debilitating, soul-destroying fear.
Llyn Clague’s poems have been published widely, including in Atlanta Review, Wisconsin Review, California Quarterly, Main Street Rag, New York Quarterly, Ibbetson Street. His sixth book, The I in India and US, was published by Main Street Rag in 2012.