Incendiary by Vernon Scannell

That one small boy with a face like palid cheese,

And burnt out little eyes could make a blaze.

As brazen, fierce, and huge, as red and gold,

And zany yellow as the one that spoiled.

Three thousand guineas worth of property

And crops at Godwin Farm on Saturday

is frightening - as fact and metaphor :

An ordinary match intended for

The lighting of a pipe or kitchen fire

Misused many set a whole menagerie

Of flame-fanged tigers roaring hungrily.

The sky on fire and choke the stars to heat

Such skinny limbs and such a little heart

Which would have been content with one warm kiss

Had there been anyone to offer hits.

...

This poem was particularly appealing to me because it related lot of issues on school

violence today.  It is a composition of this little boy who grew up unloved and unwanted.

In today's incidents, you could call him as one of the outcasts.  The poem describes of

him as little boy with "such skinny limbs and such a little heart."  But inside there is

a fiery character inside of him which ends with a blazing violence.  For instance, if

we were to take an example of this little boy with colorado discharge and other school

shootings, the killers were in fact, raised undisciplined, without loving tender care from their
parents or fellow friends.  They could have been "content" with "one warm kiss." 
They could have been "content" with a sign of "sympathy" or "compassion" from people.

Instead they are mocked and saddened from cruel demonstrations. The outcomes
from this poem and the current reality, is a case that needs to be fixed immediately.
There is a lesson that needs to be learned: show compassion to one another.
You can never know that one little boy can bring a time of shock, "innocent" killings,

and depression to the whole world.

To James' Little Brother