flags are half-staff at the capitol & everywhere
red stripes tell blood; today not of revolutionaries
but children, ours, because they are all
our children, just learning letters & numbers,
sight words, how to run & today how to die
all we had to learn was how to hide under desks.
this drill is a new one; no siren but gunshots
& there is no way to practice for this,
the fastest way to hide in corners
while the teacher locks the door
the right way to walk out of school
after gun shots, eyes closed and linked,
hands on the shoulders of the child ahead
a breathing chain of what is precious;
this is what we must teach our children,
because they are our children, all of them,
fallen & live–the ones we hold grateful
& the ones we are just beginning
to mourn. This losing has everything
to do with second amendments
& nothing of taking God out of school,
because the One tho sees all weeps, invited
or not.
“We heard loud booms
& the teacher told us to hide
in the corners”
There are no words for this,
there is no defense & politics
do not apply to these small spaces
with big pain added up. We count loss here
not in lives but places, because the numbers
are numbing, too many to remember
at once, but we need to say each name,
not wadded into a ball of a place
as one.
They are all our children, our parents,
brothers & sisters.
To tell it
is to meet the gorgon’s eyes. We are stone
falling to the floor harder than gravity allows.
“I was out in the hall
when everybody heard the bullets.
they went into a total panic.”
little boy who said this, how do you feel
about guns don’t kill people, people kill people
what do you know of the right to bear arms?
the right to bear arms breaks down
6 adults & 20 children, dead:
Sacrificed to what god?
Not mine.
For:
Anne Marie Murphy
Lauren Rousseau
Mary Sherlach
Victoria “Vicki” Soto
Rachel Davino
Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung
Charlotte Bacon, 6
Daniel Barden, 7
Olivia Engel, 6
Josephine Gay, 7
Dylan Hockley, 6
Madeline F. Hsu, 6
Catherine Violet Hubbard, 6
Chase Kowalski, 7
Jesse Lewis, 6
Ana Marquez-Greene, 6
James Mattioli, 6
Grace McDonnell, 6
EmilIe Parker, 6
Jack Pinto, 6
Noah Pozner, 6
Caroline Previdi, 6
Jessica Rekos, 6
Avielle Richman, 6
Benjamin Wheeler, 6
Allison N. Wyatt, 6
******Pingbacks. Normally I enjoy it when someone wants to share my work, as a reference to what inspired him/her to write something. However, when someone takes a poem like God Weeps and uses it to back up some insane grumbling about how gun control does not work in Australia, this yank chick gets hopping mad. So–feel free to use my poetry, if it does not go against EVERYTHING you are saying in your posts, please.
Susan Daniels Poetry 