In America
a poem
Menace, the cunning coward,
found a fertile ground in this land of plenty.
She confidently investigates,
slithers in and out of places she can be least suspected,
and as if lives were coins to be traded,
she takes and exchanges lives for guns,
and stockpiles ammunition.
Today, the blood thirsty addict is pregnant
with inconsolable, persisting malice,
and hungers again for much more than ever before.
She’s unstoppable!
Meet her sister - Madness.
They walk toe-to-toe.
Fire spitting beasts
reap budding lives,
hatch unfathomable grief.
How could that be allowed in this land of laws and plenty?
Smell this oppressive scent;
Too familiar by now?
Yes, that’s the scent of another carnage,
and that sound; what is it? — You ask
That’s the sound of guns, of violence,
and another unforgiving,
massive door, shutting down on a life,
yet again so irreversibly.
Love’s protective primer rapidly blistering
off of heart walls.
Dread’s cloak, merciless, sweeping
last bits of resurrective hope.
There is no hope — we’re told — no hope.
Menace is winning.
The dead are dead, and the living?
Well, the living are ordered to go on living
If it were only this easy.
Hush! Hush little baby
Don’t you cry…
Hear her mother’s silent scream,
no voice coming out into this unyielding, gut-wrenching void.
Her baby goes — poof!
The void’s now evolving into an unsurmountable grief,
a wrecking ball to chain her to this moment on.
There is no lifetime long enough for this broken heart to heal.
Don’t tell him to not despair!
Tomorrow, he must bury his baby!
Don’t tell her this is a senseless tragedy
or that this is the world we live in!
Tomorrow, she must bury her baby!
Their baby went to school, a safe place to be; No?
How is it… ?
How is it possible this keeps happening, and in this land of laws and plenty?
Rage and hell pour down like rain now too frequently
Just as another call to action swells up,
apathy descends, disarms.
Menace takes a short break,
leaves behind her sister Madness
to babysit us all.
No solution in sight.
Tell me —
How could this be allowed to keep repeating in this land of laws and plenty?
