Once I owned a rainbow gun.
I filled it with sparkles and skittles and sunshine.
I would shoot it high into the air.
watching as the smiles beside me grew.
There was no war on the news,
no death,
only the brilliant shine
of the weather girl's teeth,
as she pronounced that it would be,
another warm, sunny day.
The years passed,
and time grew,
soon I was used to the sky
and the tint of red underlying the gray.
Thunderstorms and frigid snow
brought about the turning of
our news channel.
Filtering in on high frequency waves
were screams and cries of
our kin,
as we watched, popcorn in hands,
waiting for the commercials
to allow us to view the world,
through rose-tinted shades
and tunnels warped by scents of
lemon yellow sunshine
and shots of smiles much wider
than our own.
My gun grew with dust
and rust,
and they wanted me to enlist
in a war that wasn't mine to fight,
in a battle that I knew nothing of.
I put away my gun,
so that they would not find it
and plague me
with their requests for bloodshed.
But years went by and still they came.
One day, with guns of their own in hand,
they came and knocked on my door,
a steady pounding beat.
I nodded, acknowledging my defeat and
told them that I would just be
one minute.
I dusted off my gun and ran
a slick polish over its features.
They smiled when I came back,
a victory praised by their own selfish eyes,
and waved me outside to where
their truck of patterned green waited.
I walked down the grass as far as I dared,
then turned back to give them a mighty stare,
and a flip of my gun as they tilted their heads
in awe,
not for a second realizing that my gun
was not meant for warfare,
and they charged at me with guns and fists,
and I smiled wider than the commercial gods,
and pressed the trigger.
There will never be a fireworks display quite as brilliant
as the one that day,
that caused the soldiers so much grief,
a horror to be displayed,
high into the air,
with the sparkles, skittles and sunshine.
I managed to whisper, as I fell back
due to the sudden impact of the shot,
"Taste my rainbow, fuckers."
And I thought back
to the weather,
on the news.