You have to ask what logic applied,

To make Jonestown commit mass suicide?

The community, founded by one Jim Jones,

Was a ramshackle place of broken homes,

Of medical problems,  of disrepair,

Of mass food shortage, profound despair.

It was founded on a utopian dream,

But ended up with actions this extreme.

Leo Ryan* tried to visit in ’78,

But ended up dead at the airport gate.

As a result Jones called together the people he led,

And just hours later, 909 were dead…

300 were children, from cyanide,

A shot to the temple is how Jim Jones died.

 

*A congressman shot by Jones’ Red Brigade.

 

This incident in Guyana ranks among the largest mass suicides in history, though most likely it involved forced suicide and/or murder, and was the single greatest loss of American civilian life in a deliberate act until the air strikes on the World Trade Centre twin towers in New York of September 11, 2001.