NaPoWriMo Poem for April Third

bullet billet-doux

the first bullets were ball shaped.
that’s why we call them bullets:
boulet is middle french for ‘little ball.’

now we have bullet trains,
bullet points,
number one with a bullet,
and a video technique for freezing action
known as bullet time.

bullets set the bar for mass killing,
especially after the invention of the gatling gun.
the early, exciting, life-ending bullet was the acorn
from which the oak of the atomic bomb grew.

bullets and their progeny test us.
we generally fail the toughness-of-flesh test.
some of us pass the we-can-do-without-them test;
unfortunately, some of us are not enough
and never will be:
either we all pass, or, soon or late,
we’re all gone.