From a long adventure bearing
Bottled up my youth and yearning
In my home alone and fearing
Screaming, hissing, writhing, Fitting
Crucifix in my hand I dothe implore
Came a tapping at my window floor
So I looked outside and nothing more

In my bed in room alight
Demons hissing, flitting then alight
Turn up the juice I need more light
Monsters from the darkness come alive
And in my weakness I might die
Comes a rapping at my window floor
And I know for sure there is nothing there

It is like a peculiar tapping
not a coarse and raucous rapping
not a loud and boisterous crashing
A little pecking, clicking thrashing directed at the window floor
I dare not look ouside for gravest fear
I am sure there is nothing there

Laying in the hospital bed insane
Roommate dearest also bane
Booming air duct sounds along with pain
Darkness madness freedom maimed
Others here they are the same
Comes a tapping at my window floor
So I scream out loud and nothing more

In this hotel they shock and twist
And drug and startle and slap and rip
They come back shadows through the big oak door
Grinning devils bare and bored
And in the night returns the rapping
A little trite peculiar winking tapping
Tapping at my window floor
So I start to pray and nothing more

Back at home in just a wink
Once a week I see a shrink
Asking what I see and hear
What I think and what I fear
And my future goes amidst the tears
And in the blackness comes that tapping
The familiar simple shortened clapping
A clacking at my window floor
And I am sure outside there is nothing there

Even in the morning early
While I awaken slow and surly
Before the sun rises so cheery
The sound appears that I abhor
I hear a tapping at the front door
The little trifled intentioned clacking
The peculiar light and evil tapping
Tapping again at my front door
I am afraid to look and nothing more

Reading in the night so deep
No sounds, no light no insects creep
No mice to remind of loss of sleep
Then returns the peculiar click and ticking
Alight and brusque and sickening pecking
A tap tap tapping at my window floor
Gone and back and rotten fear
I am scared to death and nothing more

And this before the sounds and words
Are peculiar things that I have heard
In the blossom of my youth
Came a loving brush with death
And to this day sometimes I hear a tapping
Always a light and affectionate clacking
A click clack clacking at my new front door
And now my soul is not so bare
So I look away because nothing’s there

On PCH and moonrise Avenue, Next to Ted’s restaurant, God built a long reef of cobblestones that deposited from Sea Castle Mountain and the lair of Estat.  Too bad the beach sits in the shadow of Catalina Island and Clemente Island to the south. Farm Beige fishes the reef at moonrise and usually wins the halibut derby every year.   Seaweed covers the reef and forms a beautiful brownish-green canopy offshore in the water in front of the island.  The Towers hang off the cliff above the moonrise.  Huge pylons set into the cliff enable a huge hotel-like structure to perch precariously over the PCH.  The blue sky hover over the pebble-strewn beach with coarse white sand and buttressed point, where a parking lot saves paradise and Teds restaurant smells like a steak and French fries.  The white sharks that hover off shore love the garbage Ted’s pumps into the ocean and the huge beasts can be felt near and closer when a surfer cares to surf alone.  The fear, the sickening feeling of seizure, strikes lonely surfers because Moonrise heralds as an overflow surf spot for beginners, refuse and stooges.  The only way to get the break with tremendous form is to live there and call in sick to work when it happens.  Once a year or two or three, moonrise point breaks better then Lanikea on Oahu, Hawaii and fifteen-second tube rides become the norm rather than the exception.  The secret lies in the shallow reef that only functions when the swell impinges directly from the west, bypassing Catalina and focusing on moonrise.  When a fifteen-foot west swell enters Monica Bay, only surfrider beach breaks better and half the world is there and not at moonrise.

Lanikea on the North shore of Oahu lives a short drive up from Haleiwa, down from Eukai and next to Chuns.  When Lanikea works, a long wall a quarter-mile long breaks down the beach at light speed. A rider must live there to catch it.    Moonrise reef breaks rounder but rarely, and appears as an ephemeral spirit enlivening the life of a lonely nomadic wave rider who lives up the canyon a mile away close to the darkness those envelopes Tranquil Hills. When the moonrise reef breaks big, a rider enters the wave at the point in front of the restaurant.  The wave then slows down for a second and then lines up on the reef like a long wall and breaks as a vortex for fifteen seconds all the way to the Bell Air Bay Club.beach.  Swells like this hit moonrise for one day only and then drop off tremendously. The west swell must peak at ten or more feet for the reef to work properly.  People live near moonrise or they don’t.  Frequently the only other thing swimming at moonrise are great white sharks attracted by the garbage and runoff from Sea Castle.  They rarely come up but someone surfing alone can feel them close.  

Wracks had the pleasure of sharing big waves with that person who sang out of Seattle and died up there.  He was a student at the University of Seattle in the health sciences.  He and utopia would nab the big sets with scarcely anyone else to contend with except the Brazilian Jib jets expert who retired after a successful MMA career.  Wracks never bothered with the Brazilian even though he would propelknock shoot his board at Wracks and threaten a takedown.  The waves when they happened were just too good to think about doing anything else.  Wracks, utopia, and the Brazilian together with some white tips were the only ones out at moonrise and would watch the steady flow of traffic going north to rich man’s land while waiting for big sets. Most of the time Moonrise looks like a placid lake with ripples lapping up on shore in view of the windows at the restaurant. In his youth, wracks would walk down the canyon, past the swami realization center, and with his homemade surfboard paddle at moonrise. Wracks would the walk up Moonrise Avenue, up the canyon, and back to his home and family and friends and the darkness soon to envelope tranquil hills and mark the countryside for evermore.

In the free flow of consciousness existing in the mind of Wracks these memories flood consciousness and overflow into a keyboard hooked up USB to a cheap laptop. Late at night wracks wishes to share the beauty of the world, the accomplishment of athletic achievement and the free spirit of youth that reside in an older body now.  The girls, the waves, the dark force, they have all come and gone but what remains is moonrise, Surfrider, and Zero in the middle of the heart of terror set in opulent America. Wracks was there but not there anymore. A rider has to live there to get it because it is gone in a day like Lanikai, Pupa kea and El Cap. Just like life, peak experiences happen and then are gone in the short, long task called life. 

The scenario is a sleepy Texan town close to the border of Mexico.   A distraught 18-year-old mental patient, who has been coerced by unknown forces, buys two assault rifles, enters a suburban elementary school and starts shooting young children as a political statement.  The gunman is either apprehended or shot and a rampage of vocalizing pacifists demand that the government prohibit the owning or bearing of firearms.  The question here really is not the gun industry but the social fabric that caused a young citizen to run amuck.   However, this paper focuses on the second amendment and the right to bear arms. 

The memory of the public is very short.   Just one hundred years ago, outlaws armed with state-of-the-art repeating rifles and sidearms would commander whole towns, take all the money, rape all the pretty women and be off in a swirl of dust towards their next objective. This is called the wild, wild, west.   Farm owners had to maintain an arsenal of rifles and shotguns because occasionally, desperados would infiltrate and conquer their rancho.   It seems like the supply of criminals is endless but the human aspect of life is a topic for another dissertation.  It was only a militia of colonials armed with French long rifles that gave their lives, their liberty and their health to start the great and peaceful nation that we love and live in today. 

Pacifists and feminists and the like all believe unsavory characters should be poisoned and euthanized in the local hospital as a fitting punishment for their crimes because it is non-violent.   This sounds like cruel and unusual punishment to me.   The pacifists mandate that violence is now a felony with one year of mandatory imprisonment so now the rich can poison who they like at will and get away with it.  It is logical to assume that the best recapitulation against a poisoning miscreant is to punch them out, but now violence is anathema in our present society.  In a developed high-class society where violence is prohibited, the one who can afford the best poisoner wins, and that is that.  Maybe this is why some seemingly innocuous teenagers go berserk and start killing.

This author is not a psychologist or licensed psychiatrist but notices that owning a firearm is masculine and almost all successful men have at least one.   They feel that bigger and more is better and this is the manly way to go.  All gun experts like big weapons like 357 magnum, 45 ACP and 50 caliber browning.  Watch U-tube and learn.  Little machos all have 22 rimfire and most of the handgun accidents in the United States are caused by 22 rimfire weapons.  If a reader has ever fired a handgun, they know that recoil is daunting and only experts prefer the big calibers.

A solution but now a panacea for this dilemma can be the statutes for firearm possession and licensing. May it be the age to possess a firearm for everyone be raised to the age majority of 21?   People, let it be so.   As a placation to all the incredibly wealthy gun manufacturers, a law should be added to the 2nd amendment as a rider to the effect that only new firearms bought from the manufacturer can be obtained and all old or used firearms be confiscated and destroyed.   Anyone owning or selling a used firearm without registration be subject to immediate incarceration for six months.  This way the rich can get richer but the poor will protected from a minimum of firearms in circulation.

This essay is a sample of Americana at its best and it does not take a 100 page treatise written by lawyers to convey the simple formula of gun control.  New guns only, ownership and possession by age of majority of 21.   There are thousands of used weapons floating around at gun shows, America only has to make it so!