MASS SHOOTING

From my physiopoetry project: Skin on Sundays.

Mass Shooting

She said, kill me in my sleep,
a quick spray of bullets
that are so quiet
no one will know I’m gone
for at least a little while.

He said, kill me under the veil
of my favorite song
played live in the desert
just a bit after sunset;
as the darkness sweeps over
the orange land, let it sweep
over me too.

They said, kill us invisibly
from the sky
so our spirits may rise
in wonder
of that very rising,
of the rest
that is up there.

Me? Kill me by the sea
please, for that is where
I have found
paradise, paradise
in peace, from inward,
the only kind
that can exist
from now on.

---

Does this poem make you sad? I guess if it works, then it should, because it is sad. It was sad writing it, heavy during the photoshoot, and thinking about it is never going to be easy.

The reality of the world is now more than ever that guns in the United States are killing people. You can say what you want about it being people that kill people and not the guns, but recently, almost 60 people are dead because of relaxed laws about gun ownership, the kind of guns that can spray bullets into a crowd, leaving so many dead and wounded that it is impossible not to think, wow, that could happen to me at any moment and for no reason. Back when the right to bear arms was established as part of the US Constitution, in order to kill a person with a gun, you had to do something like load powder into a musket, and it wasn’t a quick process. There was no chance you were going to commit mass murder with your musket, because before you could get around to it, some of the people you were going to kill would probably attack you. That’s clearly not the case anymore, and because guns are more precious than lives to (I would guess) the majority of Americans, because those people for some reason think it is a human right to possess guns whose only purpose is to shoot other humans, people will continue to die at alarming rates at schools, concerts, clubs, parades, movie theaters, salons, and on and on, from bullet wounds. All we can do now is hope we’re not in the wrong place at the wrong time.