‘An Occurrence at Chattanooga, Tennessee’ by Slade W. U. Bierce

While we expect for our marines to go into harm’s way,
and so they do so, and without a hesitation’s stay;
when they’re attacked at home and killed in their community,
it is insidious and dreadful to the nth degree;
and this is what occurred in Chattanooga, Tennessee,
when a base villain armed with a machine gun
shot four dead.

For friends and families, a void that never can be filled
has now appeared within their lives, the day these four were killed:
no words can bring young Skip Wells back, who was but twenty-one;
nor Carson Holmquist, twenty-seven, there are simply none;
and David Wyatt, thirty-seven left wife, daughter, son,
and forty-year-old Thomas Sullivan
his purple heart.

But bad news didn’t end there; we learned sailor Randall Smith,
a father, twenty-seven, of three daughters, makes a fifth.