Another of America’s hidden cannons broke its moorings suddenly this past week becoming a strange, supernatural beast. An 18 year old suddenly was transformed into a monstrous armored loose cannon. His young bullied smallishness belied his billiard-ball moves, as he rocked and rolled with his irregular internal rotating, pitching, and yawing.

Before he embarked on his voyage to hell, he seemed to meditate, quickly posting his contemplations online and then plummeting down onto his course. He shot lead arrows opening up a locked classroom door and went from classroom to adjacent classroom, whirling around, playing killing rock and roll music as he went, slipping, dodging, rearing up, fending off an initial counterattack, crashing about more, killing, and exterminating.

This loose cannon was a battering ram capriciously assaulting innocents — a school, its children, and teachers.

The children suddenly let loose a cry of despair, and at the same time a noise was heard wholly unlike any other sound. Automatic weapons fire.

Something terrible was happening.

A mad gunner and his cannons had broken loose.

The most dangerous situation that can possibly take place in a school. Nothing more terrible can happen to it and its occupants when the school is unlocked and has no real ready-to-rock-n-roll defenses.

Cannons like these that break their moorings suddenly become matter set free. This boy – enslaved by his bullying – was avenging himself in total depravity concealed from us like a camouflaged inanimate thing growing slowly beneath the earth’s surface. It had escaped, bursting forth all of a sudden, losing all patience to take his strange mysterious revenge.

There is nothing more relentless than this wrath of these inanimates. This enraged lumpen mass leapt like a panther, nimble as a mouse, and stubborn as an ox

And what could be done at that moment? How to put an end to it? You can reason with a dog, astonish a horse, frighten a bear, tame a lion, but we have nothing to throw against this monster loose cannon. All you can do is kill its sinisterness, dead.

How could we anticipate their comings and goings, their returns, their stops, their shocks and frightful meanderings? Like trying to catch a projectile, which has a mind of its own, and changes its direction at every instant.

All my life I heard the phrase “loose cannon” used to describe folks that, in some way or another, are dangerously out of control. Have heard it, as have you, thousands of times. Until now, I never really thought about what it might really mean.

Each following day’s fresh news has detailed for me what a loose cannon is and what it means in intricate, desperate, and horrific detail. An unrestrained battering ram — full of random destructive motion, hateful & vengeful intent, well armored and powerfully armed. This is what modern America’s loose cannons are. Mad charioteers of the Apocalypse.

But what to do about it? And what to do after that? Our political and media types have unsurprising solutions(s). Despite their protestations to the contrary, these posturing moralizers are not what they seem. There is truly more than one kind of loose cannon.

Meanwhile, the families attend to their lost and sewing their hammock-shrouds before committing their loved ones to the deep.

Loose cannon of old

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