Twenty-Six Lines

Twenty-six lines about twenty-six souls,

A twenty-year old stuck in twenty-six holes.

Twenty-six lifelines cut way too short.

Twenty-six pages of police report.

Twenty six-year-old lives down the drain.

Twenty-six in the Senate could’ve ended some pain.

But filibuster cluster-fucked that hallowed hall.

Transgression of few meant regression for all.

So some twenty-six lives would be all but forgot.

Some twenty-year-old psycho had seen them all shot.

And the public at large would remember them not,

No, not at the end of the day.

Yet, I couldn’t seem to forget those forgotten.

No, I was so haunted by those top and bottom –

Those twenty-six lives and those twenty-six “statesmen”;

The plenty slick senator-folk who’d disgraced them.

Twenty-six years ere, a shuttle exploded.

The presses rolled, the newsrooms devoted.

But Newtown was old news and sadly demoted,

To page twenty-six news anon.

Only twenty-six letters in our alphabet,

How could they soak up the blood that was let?

Of those twenty-six innocent victims and yet,

Here I peck like some scavenging birds…

For the words to solve twenty-six crimes.

All in all in just twenty-six lines.

CHARLES  A. METZNER