ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER SHOOTING
Gunshots flame, and children
incinerate like smoke.
Parents plead for humanity—which doesn’t hear its name
and flits off to save the whales,
a safer endangered species.
Gunfire rips through fences, gates, and locks.
Places where people gather
are ripe for impromptu executions.
The flare-up of excuses—doused by thoughts and prayers.
And still gun sales thrive.
Guns sold and resold—a solid investment.
Fear and need eat like cancer.
Guns kill the pain—but, like all drugs,kill from the inside.
Society’s caretakers shrug,
chanting a mantra revamped for profit:
the right to bear arms.
Sunshine hums with voices of the newly-slaughtered
who no longer vote
and won’t get in the way.
Some leave tiny footprints,
tracking grief all over rugs and hearts.
Tiny footprints:
the cost of doing business.
Pat, your likening the gun culture to the culture of yet another drug is prescient and spot-on. As you write, “thoughts and prayers” are a poor response to what is a real crisis. I thought this poem was wonderfully expressive and cogent. Thank you.