That feeling I get
When he's there
Taking your attention
You've got none left to spare

Makes me want to scream
To the sky
How much I want him
Just to go away and die

Because he is
Everything I hate
And he knows it
He thinks that he's so great

But I just want to
Smash his face in
With
A really
Big
Rock

There's something exhilarating about watching the hero of an action movie soar across the silver screen, thrusting fists into the face of some grotesque, mustached villain. Every time I see a thriller, I am at the edge of my seat, bubbling with excitement.

When the security guard came sprinting into the lunch room shouting, "This is a lockdown." I didn't feel anything even remotely close to excitement. I didn't want to skip through the commercials, didn't want to turn the page. I wanted to close the book, to pause the movie, to curl up in the safety of my own skin and never leave.

It was nothing like the movies. There was no hunky hero waiting in the wings to save us. There were only teachers on the edge of a breakdown, as they slowly realized that they were responsible for the two hundred lives they had just herded into the auditorium.

The villain was invisible. He was a crackle on the radio, a shadow in the corner, a ghost hanging in the forefront of everyone's mind. There wasn't a clear cut solution, no Bruce Wayne to bust in and kick some ***. Just terrified kids, and the teachers who were so much more human than I had ever seen them.

The girl next to me's hands shook in her lap, her voice carrying a note of panic that I'm sure matched my own. My knuckles turned white as I gripped my phone like a lifeline, trying to send words of love through the airwaves to my everything, who was cowering in a corner of the algebra classroom three stories up.

In the movies, goodbyes are always a performance. They are dramatic and gut wrenching. They are sobs into the sky, and screams into the night. What the movies don't prepare you for is the idea that your goodbye could be an eight letter text message, or a whisper no one would ever hear. As I waited for a reply, I wondered what would happen if this was the end. Maybe I'd hear her name on the radio that the teacher was holding, read from a list of casualties from another teen drama. Maybe I'd come home to find her name plastered across tv screens, my best friend's face synonymous with a caricature of tragedy.

If they made a Lifetime movie about this, I wonder who would play her, what glamorous Hollywood actress would dissect her personality and attempt to transform into a pale ghost of the girl I've known since childhood. I wondered how much money she would make for wearing a dead girl's skin.

Somehow, "school shooting" has become a marketable phrase and sold to me with a perfect soundtrack and a dramatic title. I wonder how much money I have given to the same people who wouldn't hesitate to turn my tragedy into a blockbuster for all to see, as they fill fiction with the faces of the nonfictional dead.

The voice on the radio signaled the all clear. The girl next to me breathed the deepest sigh of relief I have ever heard. My best friend sent back a text much longer than eight letters. A happy ending, I suppose. But as I walked out of that auditorium, something shattered inside of me. I will never hear a gunshot without imagining it coming from behind my best friend, never watch the news without wondering why it wasn't us, never see a bullet without feeling it pierce my mind.

I haven't been to a single action movie since.

I've already lived one.

The last time I held my father's hand,
he broke my ring finger unapologetically.
I tried to talk to the doctor about it but it ended in my mother
slamming her wedding ring to the ground and the exam room stuttering into a silence
that shattered my ear drums.
Distant songs began to leak through the cracks in the foundation of my childhood and our house bled hollow screams and echoing slaps.
I was 7 then.

I was 8 when I realized that not all houses were homes
and that not all Fathers were Dads and that not all scars were physical.

Almost a decade later, I am in a sickly green room
that belongs to a boy with eyes as bright as the sun
and hands that are so different from those that broke mine 10 years ago.
He tells me he loves me and for a second, the screaming stops and the songs fade.
I still flinch when he lifts his arms to reach for something,
and I still have trouble holding hands,
but the cracks in my foundation feel a little more filled.

I was 8 when I realized not all houses were homes.
I was 17 when I learnt that sometimes, arms feel more like home than 4 walls and a roof ever will.

“Violence is bad”, children are told,
as we hit them again for doing things wrong.

“Violence solves nothing”, we repeatedly say,
as we march off to war to get our own way.

Surrounded by rants against the evils of hate,
as another bomb is planted to end the debate.

“War is so wrong”, they forever preach,
until they crave something that is just out of reach.

Protesting for “Peace” at a Military base,
the same day the protestor ***** his best friend.

But "**** is so bad", the media bleat,
next to some ******* and a titillating piece.

“I **** you for your beliefs; you **** me for mine”,
the unbelievable ritual of the slaughterhouse kind.

So it’s “Just another war for ending all wars”,
such nonsense is spoken to justify their cause.

Disfigured by violence, a child cries “why?”,
deafened by the world’s silence and covered up eyes.

With whispers of peace, silenced by hate,
lost voices at night, and echoes of rage.

Surrounded by cries lost in the dark,
only the loudest get heard, the rest leave no mark.

So do we hate death? I reckon we don’t,
as new ways are invented to take what we want.

Our love for the battle, of guns, power and fame,
is a far too seductive and profitable game.

But longing for peace and an end to all wars,
starts inside each of us, not slogans on boards.

Until anger, greed and hatred cease inside us all,
the foundations for violence will never fall.

(c) Gordon Warren June 2014

If you heard sounds over Chicago
Would it be UFOs or the blast of guns?
Do they sound like drums hurting everyone
Are they hitting your heart or your conscience?
If you fell over holes on the streets would you get eaten by Alligators

If you see spaceships over Chicago
Would you be alarmed as the snow?
Going down the city and drive you crazy

Is this the end of the world or is that snow?

There's been a shooting in North London today -
Ugly girls with nothing but ****** to their name
"You shouldn't be outside," she said to me
But there are stars in my eyes and I can't ******* see
like blood down my throat and I called myself to act
a Monster's actions is what makes a Monster that-
So his gun, his knife, my razor, my prayers
Too many diamonds in these suburban stares
this world is a poison and to **** is to cure
That'd teach ******* like me what it means to be impure -
I have a world in my mind where the skies are mine
and now I wouldn't have to leave it, not this time
Quickly now, you'll be pretty once you're dead
you looked a bit like a boy from the book he'd read
brushing doll hair with tobacco stained fingers
the one thing you knew was the stench of smoke lingers.