On The Event of the Keira Street Shooting; Wollongong, NSW; February 1999

Curled up in a ball
Next to a busy city street,
Shivering like he’s freezing
In the summer heat
As his panicked gasps
And struggled breathing
Distilled into mottled gray skin
Speckled with crimson red

His hands were wrapped
Around his head
As if he was still cowering
From the explosion of shotguns blasts,
He was stuck in that moment,
Time standing still in his mind
As the crowd crowded around him
Like ants to a crumb of food
And the light around him faded,
Focusing into a beam far in the distance

I walked closer to him,
Unable to do anything
As the world frantically clambered
To restore normality
Amid a scene of utter chaos,
Accelerated by the catalyst,
Violence spraying from the end
Of a sawed off Monday afternoon

Tire tracks tattooed into the asphalt
As the antagonist of this final narrative
Fled the scene.