Another mass shooting, this time in a small Texas church, before that the New York City bike path and before that Las Vegas, and so on, back into what seems endless time. Every time there is a mass shooting, Las Vegas or Sandy Hook school, or any other atrocity, the shooter’s friends and neighbors say they can’t believe it, he was such a nice, quiet guy, always pleasant, give you the shirt off his back and so forth and so on. But we never know what goes on inside a person’s head until the dead pile up

They say he was a nice guy, mild
Inside his head was deuces wild
Will we find out that as a child
He tortured neighbors’ cats?
How did he get those guns inside
A hotel from where people died
And screamed and ran and fell and cried
Like someone swatting gnats
The term ‘lone wolf’ is just a trope
Designed to maintain the slim hope
That damages are small in scope
And candles will suffice
But wolves all hunt in ordered packs
Coordinate their fierce attacks
And so we must never relax
For life rolls with the dice