Ballistics Report by Henry Rifle

We’re proud to announce the release of Ballistics Report, featuring the comic styling of Henry Rifle.

Summary: The American poet Henry Rifle is dead. You could remember him as the guy who fell in a hail of bullets launched his way by a Mexican firing squad. Or you could remember him for his poems and the charitable work he liked to tell people he did. Undoubtedly, he would prefer the latter. He might especially appreciate it if you remembered him for his last collection of poems — Ballistics Report. Were he here, he would tell you that was probably the closest he ever got to capturing the truth as he knew it. It contains everything: the humor, the heartbreak, the passion, the pathos; the unique perspective that almost made him famous. Henry Rifle liked to say ‘It’s always what you thought, but never what you think.’ What he meant was that the clues are generally there for the mystery to be solved, but we usually don’t see that until after the police have arrived, and it’s too late to do more than wring our hands and bemoan the fact we didn’t connect the dots quicker. Henry Rifle connected those dots. And even though it’s too late for him, you might benefit from the twisted picture he put together.

(shipping and handling are free to U.S. residents)

(sample poem)
Mercutio’s Blues

It appears the earth was cast
by a thoughtful potter.
The moon, by a talented provincial
who never quite broke free of their orbit.
When the moon debuted,
it was almost certainly
panned universally.
‘Unaccomplished,’ I’m sure,
was a common review.
Other skeptics probably derided
the satellite’s
decided lack of artifice
– and criticized it’s orbit.
For centuries, it’s possible scarcely anyone
looked up to it at all.
Then, eventually, perhaps
it was the bohemians who rediscovered it.
Songs were composed, paintings
created, ripe poetry harvested
beneath its placid beams.
And, lo, over the course
of many, many centuries,
that moon
slowly became the focus
of countless hopes and dreams.
It hangs there gracefully yet today,
a glowing reminder that
yesterday’s disasters
sometimes prove to be
tomorrow’s masterpieces.