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Police patrol a neighborhood in the Boston suburb of Watertown. (Charles Krupa/AP)

The Hunt

Amazing how one person can run berserk
through our ordinary lives; a flaw of
nature that has equipped an individual
with extraordinary talent in
manipulating the public fervour
to celebrity while the great masses
go unnoticed. Then surfaces to public
notice the antithesis of those providers
of entertainment for the adoring masses;
instead universal symbols of incandescent
and inchoate rage whose glowering
menace is suddenly transformed to
demonic terror, holding hostage
the very notion of civilization,
committing slaughter in an explosion
of pyromaniacal fury, the bright colours
of human gore hanging from the remains
of destroyed civic infrastructure.
Out flood responders to save the maimed,
military to hunt the loathers of life,
those celebrants of death. A nation's
security resources on display with
armoured cars, helicopters hovering
deafeningly, men armed and armoured
to track and restrain the demented
holy warrior of Apocalypse.