I am alive by luck at this point.
I wonder if the gun that will eventually take me has been made.
Whose trigger will bury me.
How many bullets, like a flock of sparrows, will come carry my life to its final bed.
Today, I am alive but there is no law to thank.
If not me, then someone else.
Born into a game of chance we never asked for. Traded diplomas for obituaries. Traded graduation speeches for eulogies. Traded futures for an early grave. Forced to cash in their chips. We don’t want to play anymore.
And this too is eulogy. And this too is prayer. And this too can resurrect the coffin wood back to a tree. Can sing back alive whatever parts of you died with them. Whatever leapt in your throat at yet another headline.
Mourning until you, too, are a thing to mourn.
But we will no longer be martyrs.
We are the rude awakening to politicians who pawned out our safety, who bartered our lives for bribes.
You say “gun reform is not the answer” but all I can see is a bullet rattling like a pinball in an innocent student’s jaw.
You smell like gun smoke and
I can see the AR15 you're holding behind your back and
I guess it's easy to crack jokes about dodging bullets when you're the one firing them.
Give teachers books not bullets:
Kafka isn’t kevlar.
Bronte isn’t bulletproof.
And how sick is it that we must add school shootings to your list of proud american traditions.
Throwing opinions like punches.
How many more have to die before you decide your ego isn’t as important as you think it is?
And I, too, am buried alive
My soggy grave parting its greedy lips.
To you, my bones, when ground into gunpowder and mixed into water, taste like champagne.
My pulse, as thin as an obituary panting beneath sweaty palms, and sure
We are “just kids,”
But you are forgetting we are the next generation
And you autopsy your fists.
Call it reclamatory.
Lately, when asked “how are you?” I respond with a name no longer living.
And who knows if mine will be next

Less shootings,
more intimate body groovings.

I saw him at the gates,
Wondered why he would forsake,
Time slows down and I'm running,
Running for my life.
He's climbing over,
Gun in hand.
God, oh why God have you forsaken us?

Bang Bang, down goes my friends,
Bang Bang, down goes the educators,
Bang Bang, down at my feet.

Is this where my life ends?
I'm just only seventeen,
Where will I go when I die?
He's coming for us all,
Ak-47 in his hands.
God, oh why God have you forsaken us?

Bang Bang, down goes my friends,
Bang Bang, down goes the educators,
Bang Bang, down at my feet.

He's at the door.
Am I no more?
I can't see my own two hands.
Tears on my face.
.
.
.
God?

A day of love, a day of hearts:
Valentine's Day, twenty eighteen.
The day started out like any other
But ended in a horrific scene.

Students in Parkland, Florida,
Shared their valentines today.
A former student entered the school
To celebrate in a different way.

An AR-15 assault-style rifle
Was that student's valentine.
Killing and hurting students and teachers
Was his version of "Please be mine."

All it takes is a single person
To drag a special day through the mud.
Roses and hearts with Cupid's arrow
Lie on the ground, splattered with blood.

Are we failing our people here?
When shootings occur, we ask for prayers
Instead of taking appropriate measures.
What a sad state of affairs!

Most of us enjoy our day;
Our lives return to normal tomorrow.
Valentine's Day for people in Parkland
Forever will be suffused with sorrow.
In memory of the victims of the 2/14/18 shooting

The worlds never truly silent
turn off your television and just listen
tires rolling over the iced streets outside
the buzzing of the street light
the pitter patter of a gutter next door
streaming water
as the water runs down the side of the curb
like children in a playground
it dances and laughs its way to the open drain
I lite my cigarette and blow a big cloud towards the stars
I hear the airplanes in the sky passing by
and a cat hisses at something in a dark corner
As I inhale again I can hear my lungs fill up with the toxic aroma
and I taste the smoke under my fingernails as a chew them off.
I hear the sound of feet and look across the street two young kids holding hands walking
I try to eavesdrop on their conversation but the cars passing bye blocks my attempt at spying on them. I can hear what their saying to each other as I see them both smiling "it's cold out here.. but your warm" I'm jealous almost and just as I think this my cigarette burns me and brings me back to the echo of the town. I toss the burnt end and here it land in a puddle I watch as it gets taken away down along the side of my house. were all a generation of the television society and left out brains on the couch as we stuff our faces full of potato chips and useless tv programs. When the real entertainment waits for us outside. where the music of the world is waiting to be heard. Instead we click our remotes and fall into a trance of law and order tv programs and violence upon violence school shootings and who the next mass ****** is a sick twisted form of entertainment. I guess listening to the world got so boring...... I guess I'm the only one who sees the world as a untamed orchestra waiting to be composed into a lovely sympathy. On mistro On you play for your little sounds are not useless I here you playing and strumming the world is perfectly in tune if you just listen.

Star light, star bright,
Twinkling with a neon sight,
How I love thy brilliant light,
And marvel in your twinkling might.

Shooting star, longing sigh,
Flying through a misty sky,
How I love thy wondrous why,
And stay along ‘till you draw nigh.

I wish I may, I wish I might,
I wish to understand your plight.
How I love thy marvelous height,
And hope you’ll stay throughout the night.

Flying fast, flying high,
Right before my very eye.
How I love thy heart’s imply,
But hate to have to say goodbye.