Aurora, CO Theater Shooting (July 20, 2012)

Dark Knight

The night falls and The Knight Rises.
 In the Dark, the theater screen
Draws a Gothic play of crisis
 Where all that's Comic leaves the scene.
Smoke and bullets. Madness. Mayhem.
 Megaplex of camera plays
Transforms into Dark Asylum,
 Arkham, Riddled with the sprays

Of shotgun shells and rifle rounds,
The screams of panicked patrons down,
And one, mad Joker on the grounds:
"Why so serious? Why the frown?"
The Ledger tallies up the Score.
The puerile madman goes to jail.
The victims see the Knight no more,
And explanations can't but fail.

The gunman but an ungrown boy,
Whose world is tragic fantasy:
A paltry fool we'll now destroy.
Real Jokers, rightly, don't go free.
The dignity of human life,
The love of life, of all for all,
Are they passing in this night
Where the Code of Knights meets gall?



One reader of this poem believed I was aggrandizing the gunman in this poem by making him into just what he wished to be - the Joker. I cannot see how my descriptions of him as mad, puerile, ungrown boy, paltry fool and an enemy of all that is good can be interpreted this way.