"shootings" poems
1995 saw the start of Generation Z,
the ‘iKids’ with a knack for this new-fangled technology,
Millennial 2.0,
caught in the limbo of the World Wide Web development and Rose Gold iPhones.
They say we’re adaptable,
but apparently we can’t make our own decisions about anything.
They say that we don’t care about anything
except for our tiny little screens,
but they forget who put them in our hands,
and they forget who they run to for help
when they forget how to troubleshoot.
They forget what kind of technology we need to keep sustaining life in the Information Age,
Caught in a crossfire because
Yeah, we’re 90s kids—but the 90s never really actually ended until 2006,
the only difference between two decades being
how much neon versus how much chrome,
and just how expensive accidentally opening the internet app on your mom’s blackberry phone was.
We’re nostalgic for all the things we can’t quite remember,
and half these high schoolers weren’t actually born until 2000 or 2001.
Most of us aren’t old enough to even remember 9/11, nothing outside of the news clips that our teachers show us in history class every single September.
I was born in the same year as the Columbine shootings.
The United States has not been at peace for a year of my life.
We are always fighting— fighting for everything.
Human equality,
posing arguments about micro aggressions and refugees, seeing the inhumanity in the past that we’re living.
None of us are older than 21,
under such hard scrutiny while Baby Boomers Wave 2 still run our country.
We inherited the Millenial’s exhaustion,
the generation before us spending our childhood fighting for all the things that we have never really believed in.
Fairytales.
Generation Z.
The ‘iKids’ who are going to one day be making leaps and bounds with technology,
the generation to nurse this dying planet back to health,
Millennials 2.0 who know how to learn from our forerunners’ mistakes,
who know how to adapt from Sidekicks to iPhone 6S Plus in less than a decade.
We’re the kids who have realized that fun is found in safe spaces rather than invading each other’s personal spaces.
They say we’re too sensitive,
but at the same time they claim that we’re desensitized.
And I thought we were the generation that couldn't make decisions.
Apr 11, 2016
Apr 11, 2016 at 9:21 PM UTC
**The band starts playing at a ***** and crowded backyard.
Rebellious youth gather to cast their vote with the stomping of their doc martin boots.
Beer cans everywhere, everyone's trying to let loose the raw stranglehold their society has produced.
The guitars go off and the ritual begins.
First they assemble in the heart of the pit.
In the center individual tragedies bring fourth the wrath of a God's army.
Anarchy you call it, Ha! I call it reassurance, reassurance that this anger is surely communal.
I never saw it more clearer, the youth's power to resist: If the government wont hear us, we will create our own sound even under the batons of fascism, we spit on your rule, your control of our art.
We wont bow down to a law with our names written all over it, while another politician walks free from corruption.
While another officer guns down an un armed child and calls it self-defense.
While suspicious mass shootings continue to occur and mass cameras grow in recording.
While you send more people off to war for another countries resources.
These thoughts explode out of me into shoves, screams, ****** cuts, reckless behavior, and then finally release. Pure psychiatric release.**
Jul 18, 2014
Jul 18, 2014 at 5:36 AM UTC
This is the Last Straw –
and Something About Sacred Buckets of Holistic Ice Water
****** predators, human smugglers
Starvation in the Sudan, civil war
in Syria, mass executions in China
Journalists murdered almost everywhere
Fashionable infanticide, homelessness
Unemployment, urban terrorism
Mass ****** school shootings, wildfires, racism
An unstable national government
Anti-Semitism, border desperation
Riots, arson, ecclesiastical corruption
**** alcoholism, historical cleansing
Skinheads, abuse, Khardassianistas
Volcanos, the death penalty, free verse
Affluenza, Jerry Springer, The View
Herbal tea, antifa, anti-antifa
And the soul-sucking existential despair
Of inspirational singer-songwriters:
Nah, not a bit worried about plastic straws
But I must go now; The Voices are telling me
To pour a bucket of ice water over my head
(As long as it’s not a plastic bucket)
Jul 27, 2018
Jul 27, 2018 at 3:58 PM UTC
I am somebody
Shot in the Head...
Found the bullets.
Coroner Said.
A child of God struck dead.
Gang related disputing Fools.
Aiming cowardly bullets right at you.
I guess praying prayers just won't do.
There is no safe in these hard knocks realities' Truths.
Our Sista child!
Our mother child!
All the while the bodies pile.
Her body now adds to that 'the shootings aren't as bad as last year' body count.
Can't even stand anywhere in your city NOW?
Something has to truly give.
There's a plague of rigid legalities, relaxed moralities, and political realities stealing the 'safe' from our dying breed.
The Black man withering away in siphoning inequalities.
Doubling unemployment stretches outward like a statistical wild fire....
Our present fact.
There is a genocidal component to these criminal acts.
Copyrighted (C)
Published in the 2018 Edition of the Reconstructed Literary and Visual Journal at Governors State University.
Aug 19, 2018
Aug 19, 2018 at 11:30 AM UTC
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
Apr 14, 2018
Apr 14, 2018 at 10:32 PM UTC
We live in a time of uncertainty
No jobs
Climate change
Mass killings
warnings of pandemics
Where is our utopia
where is our heaven on Earth
1900's we had
San Fransisco's earthquake
McKinley was assassinated
First Nobel prize
The Tunguska Event
nothing as changed in my eyes
1910's we had
Spanish flu
The sinking of the unsinkable ship, the Titanic
and World War 1
What else is needed to say about this decade
nothing changed as the human race lived on
1920's we had
Discovery of penicillin
The great depression
and prohibition
1930's we had
Bonnie and Clyde
Hindenburg disaster
Discovery of Pluto
Al Capone imprisoned
1940's we had
World War 2
Mount Rushmore completed
Big bang theory formulated
Israel founded
Nothing changed but who knew
1950's we had
Castro becomes Dictator of Cuba
Laika the dog goes into space
Korean War began
History never changed and neither will the Human Race
1960's we had
The rise of the Berlin wall
First man on the moon
Vietnam War
Nothing changed and won't any time soon
1970's we had
First test tube baby
Tangshan Earthquake
Kent state shootings
Elvis died
1980's we had
Chernobyl
Tiananmen square massacre
Exxon oil spill
Nothing changed and never will
1990's we had
Oklahoma city bombing
Princess Diana died
Columbine massacre
World Trade Center bombed
End of the Cold War
2000's we had
Hurricane Katrina
Pluto reclassified
Obama elected
September 11th
2010's we had
Haiti Earthquake
Japan Earthquake
Bin Laden killed
BP oil spill
England riots
Brazil riots
China banned time travel.
We're only 4 years in.
**** sapiens are nearly 200,000 years old
nothing changed
and never will
Jun 8, 2014
Jun 8, 2014 at 6:07 AM UTC
Terrorism, ****
Car bomb, **********
She feels vulnerable,
No love to keep her warm
9/11, kidnap,
Human trafficking...
She’s been forgotten,
Left alone in the dark
Serial killers, H1N1,
Child molesters, ***
She shudders with the cold,
And Port Au Prince is flattened
Hijack, ******
Drive-by shootings...
She feels groggy,
Influenza sets in
Weapons of mass destruction,
Cuban nuclear tests...
There starts a tingle in her nose,
Her eyes pinch shut
Genocide, organs on the black market,
Xenophobia, suicide bombers...
With a bellow from her bowels,
From flaming ice the cumulus anvil that infects the world
May 23, 2014
May 23, 2014 at 5:04 AM UTC
How many bullets will it take?
How much blood will be shed?
How many more lives will be taken,
before any action is taken?
When will we learn?
As a country,
When will we fight?
When is enough,
enough?
Protect kids,
Not guns.
Feb 20, 2018
Feb 20, 2018 at 10:09 AM UTC
They say I am too young to understand the way the world works.
They say it as if I'm not already aware of the wars in foreign lands or violence in our homes.
As if I don't know of the fear of death.
The price of freedom.
The cost of living.
They say it as if I don't know about the shootings or the homicides.
As if I'm unaware of those making a living off of selling poisons to others
Or of the ones who sell themselves to stay alive.
They think I don't know about *** drugs, death, fear, pain, or life itself.
Nothing is hidden in this world.
Your children grow up knowing about horror and crime.
Its ridiculous to shelter them from what they already know.
You believe they are innocent until they turn 18,
But little girls and boys grow up with pain.
There are no thoughts that you can contain.
They will find answers to the questions even if you dont want them to be found.
Jul 16, 2018
Jul 16, 2018 at 2:12 AM UTC
I remember when MTV was in its prime,
A new voice to represent the new boom
Babies growing up since the 80s
Louder still through the troubling decades
(Maxed out credit no head room)
After —the punks in nirvana and rapping clergy
It was the only channel on
Youthful rebel yell —honest news
I remember it pretty well
Shaping us generation x y and Personal Jesus
New wave good bye to when
Childhood then without pain of malnourished
Africa or nukes threatening our
Cruel summers
Were we happier then?
So what happens to the music
Rockstars rip van wrinkle
Geriatric hall of fame
(No one lives forever
Reruns with the ****** & mr. Ed
Now that old neighbor’s dead)
Television
Nowadays
Seem more gangster
School shootings terrorists
On the train, kamikaze planes,
It’s all the same ole
Bling kablam oh bits
******* please
Redirecting our attention
To WMD
***
Where the hells are we?
I remember back then
On MTV —Nicki Minaj says
Between the hysterics of police brutality
She said Happiness is living your life
Without struggle,
That stuck with me
Because we all watch the tube
We all search for meaning
Sadly defining what happiness
May look like
Real World and paradoxical reality
TV
Para socially defunct
Clarity
Conditioned to continuously
Stay tuned
Brief message of empty
Hypnosis a pure form of business
Wall Street
Boulevard of broken dreams
I want my
Happy. What do I mean
To be?
Life ***** lately
The human condition
Talking too much
Refusing to see
No more talking heads too much
Bla bla ********
I want my
MTV . Happy .
My generation
We are the world
freedom And yes, Peace.
Man kindly as one
Symphony
And street, a melting ***
Of diversity
I remember the music
The future
I had hope to see
Behind the shades
Circa 80s 90s
(Fossils)
What time is it then?
When will we
Begin
Again
Don’t worry be happy
Run Forest run!
Jan 7, 2019
Jan 7, 2019 at 11:55 PM UTC
A seemingly fine day ruined with one headline.
Then another. And another. And by the time my phone stops buzzing the news couldn't be any clearer.
We lost a battle today. A battle for basic humanity, a battle to our own autonomy.
"Women" lost. "Women" should be afraid. "Women". "Women". "Women".
Every headline I read talks about how scary the world is for women.
Yes, the world is scary for women...or anyone with a ******
I don't want to make this about me. Because it's not. It's about every transgender man that fights for healthcare on a daily basis. It's about every non-binary person assigned female at birth who can get pregnant.
and yes....it's about women.
It's about people (men and women) who think their ideals should determine what I do with my body.
It's about every pastor, minister, judge, and human being who feels they have a say in how my life is lived.
Poetry has always been and will always be political.
Poetry is art and art is expression of feeling.
Today....I'm ******
I'm overwhelmed with a feeling of dread.
The same feeling of dread I felt during the 2016 election.
The same feeling of dread I felt the night of the Pulse Orlando shootings.
The same feeling of dread I feel every time I think of wearing my trans pride shirt out in public.
I'm not afraid to say how absolutely terrified I am....I'm just afraid for whatever is coming next.
Sincerely,
- Your friendly ****** having transman.
Jun 24, 2022
Jun 24, 2022 at 10:26 PM UTC
the code red alarm rings
echoing in the halls
we drop to the floor
almost in unison
is this the end?
the teacher
the one who we trust
to protect us
is just another sheep
in this herd
of fear
nobody is safe
nor are we above
anyone else
we are equal
we are shaking
as we hug the ground
waiting
waiting
to be slain
waiting to be saved
but still
waiting
i am lucky to say
it was only a drill
but for those
across the country
they weren't that lucky
they were shot at
they were killed
they watched
their loved ones
die
we live in a country
where guns
matter more than
our kids
where an AR-15
can be purchased
by anyone
but when tragedy strikes
people act shocked
they send their prayers
their thoughts
**** that.
prayers and thoughts
don't do anything
they don't bring back
those we have lost
they don't take
the grief away from us
things won't change
until we start a riot
until we can really make a change
we are the home
of mass shootings
we need to change that
Feb 22, 2018
Feb 22, 2018 at 10:32 AM UTC
grey skies roll
clouded tropical
undercurrents
of future falls
shrouding skies
and shifting seas
from sad-eyed lowlands
to mountain highs
and we as trees
shiver branches
ever extending
shootings in the breeze
at arm’s reach
we never touch
planted
too far apart
and as such
falling droplets
slip through fingers
and shatter the ground
an endless coming down
our roots soaked through
spent
and craving more
all around
aroused from slumber
the petrichor grows
slowly floating up
and filling the air
Apr 27, 2014
Apr 27, 2014 at 9:03 PM UTC
Society moves like a bullet
And there's no way to cool it
We're not big fans of reflection
So we become slaves to deflection
Bouncing off of hard surfaces
Like limiting gun purchases
Constriction isn't part of or vocabulary
Proliferation is all we know
Watching weapon supplies grow
I live in a country
Riddled by bullets
Bullets that blast through our ****** body
Though the holes in our mind are bigger
When we can **** those we think are naughty
We become judges when we pull the trigger
But the media makes mountains out of molehills
And it is for those exaggerated reasons we ****
We are stuck in a bullet storm
When TV advertises bullet ****
This helps make bullets the norm
So we treat mass shootings with a familiarity
Because we can't acknowledge the only similarity
Is obviously the gun
We're blinded by the sun
Of defense contractors
They're negative reactors
When we purpose a change
The conversation they rearrange
By firing in every possible direction
This is the aforementioned deflection
And it works
You can tell because people are dying
Or standing in the street crying
Or watching the news sighing
Bullet time has wooed us
Bullet crimes have moved us
There are people who gain wealth
From our diminishing health
They hold society on their rope
And the only way we can cope
Is to ****** that rope from their greedy grasp and pull it
But that's hard to do while being punctured by bullets
Nov 7, 2017
Nov 7, 2017 at 3:21 AM UTC
***** Hands
Are they clean?
Pontius Pilate, washing those hands that night, now are the filthy deeds made white!
America, do tell about the politicians blind-eyed toward homeless people in the streets, tell me about children starving to death?
Does a wealthy man cleanse hiimself as the blood leaves his hands?
Banning guns & glocks, as girls
are sold into slavery, in the blocks.
A gift for kids to go to school
It's not a gift to get shot up.
From poverty to bullies to school shootings, Mrs. Liberty has lost her footing.
When we go home, locking doors and turning the noise up, is washing of the hands with soap, making us whole?
Mar 12, 2021
Mar 12, 2021 at 11:48 PM UTC
Target on the faces of my friends
The headlines detail more school shootings
One-sided consequences of uneducated masses
I’m an ******* but you made me this way
Gain knowledge of the whole truth
Before the mind sets in stone
Outside the main entrance
Count them off
One by one
My end
Our end
Apr 25, 2011
Apr 25, 2011 at 6:16 AM UTC
Shootings, shootings everywhere
Forty-nine face down in the mud
But who will save our rainbow lives
When we can't give rainbow blood?
Jun 12, 2016
Jun 12, 2016 at 8:04 PM UTC
“you ain’t a man until you’re given a gun.”
he said. but I knew better.
giving a boy a gun
doesn’t make him a man.
it makes him a boy with a gun.
my hands were made for pens, not glocks.
I told him his were too.
he laughed and said,
“nah, my hands are made the same
as every other boy on this block.
you cut off my finger, it’s still gon’ bleed.”
I tried to argue but he said,
“these hands steal ****
money, jewelry, clothes.
hell, these hands steal lives!”
and he was right about that.
he had the same dirt on his hands
that any other boy around here had.
still, I think his hands
were made for pens, not glocks.
maybe he would’ve picked up a pencil
if his hands hadn’t gotten
so used to holding a gun.
he was nineteen.
he was young and angry
and ready to fight,
and he didn’t know exactly why,
but he knew he had to be.
the streets here are where people
disappear when it gets dark,
and where no one asks questions
when the sun comes up.
there are no flowers
growing next to the sidewalk.
here, there are bags of crack
and gold chains and Cuban cigars.
there are plants here, but no flowers.
I was taught that here,
they don’t follow laws,
but they need to follow rules.
most rules here are unwritten.
instead, they are ingrained
into the street’s children,
a mantra that you could die
for not remembering.
he said, “if I die,
it’s gon’ be sprawled out on concrete.
no way I’m going down
without a fight.”
here, they are still fighting wars
that ended years ago everywhere else.
here, they grow up without
mothers and fathers.
they learn to feed themselves
as soon as they no longer
need a baby bottle.
here, it is strange
to not join in on the violence.
it is strange to not participate
in drive-by shootings.
it is strange to not want revenge.
here, strange is dangerous.
things are the way that they are
and this is the way they have always been.
here, he was any other
nineteen-year-old boy.
here, they would say he died naturally.
he stepped a little too far into view
and a bullet struck him in the right spot.
or the wrong spot,
depending on how you see it.
quick and almost painless for him,
but that hurt moved on to everyone else.
here, there are no rights and no wrongs.
things are not good or bad.
things simply are.
his mama sobbed when
she heard what happened.
she cried for him, but also
for every other boy on the block.
she cried for the boy
who ended her son’s life,
because she knew
he wasn’t any different
than any other boy here.
she cried for all the mothers
who lost their sons,
and for all the children
born into this life.
here, they don’t have to die
for you to lose them.
this life takes them from you,
dead or alive.
he was a friend,
and a brother, and a son.
he could’ve been
a writer, or an athlete,
or a ******* astronaut
for all I know.
but in the end,
he was only a boy with a gun.
here, they call that a man.
Oct 18, 2020
Oct 18, 2020 at 12:52 AM UTC
All I can see
is a wasteland of
stone, glass, metal,
and wooden rubble
in an open air prison
where children are living.
Six thousand bombs,
stirring up
thick clouds of grey dust,
obscuring the horrors
people are enduring.
The attackers are
barely even
warning people
to move on.
The exits are blocked.
The power and water is off.
The suffering doesn’t stop,
and these civilians
are unable to leave.
How are you unable to see
the hell spring of grief
that is burning human beings,
the furnace that still cooks
even when no one bothers to look
because all of the crooks
were just waiting
for the perfect excuse
to make the news
with a justified genocide.
Mass ****** and more oppression
with the weapons
America supplied,
and guess what,
another child just died,
more parents got radicalized,
and if they survive
will you be surprised
if hate is the new demoncont.
that wears their tired red eyes.
The rich guys lied and decided
that unequal retaliation
is perfectly justified,
so we are on a road
to the extinction of
human decency
as the world murders
our collective humanity.
Crack, boom,
the sound of thunder blooms
orange heated chaos,
breaking the foundation
an entire building.
A whole family line
gets an early burial,
as what’s left of my heart
gets carried inside,
popped in a box
to be buried alive,
because their beat
was the same as mine.
Nothing I write
will change the minds
of those unwilling to
listen and see people who
are close to total annihilation,
as deserving of love,
and compassion,
but even so
I am still asking.
Help, please, help!?!
Instead we get beheadings,
mass shootings,
****** assault,
retaliation,
and the expectation
of more tragedy to come.
I can easily condemn
violent actions taken,
but I need to understand
the origins of this rocky foundation,
and potential solutions,
because I can’t stand the
horrors I am facing
without eventually breaking.
Dec 2, 2023
Dec 2, 2023 at 8:46 AM UTC
17 years since 911
Safety has never returned
To the free world
School shootings now rule
Our headlines...
Saudi Arabia still
Our closes allies...
Police still shooting
Our unarmed black men...
The industrial military complex
Bigger than ever
President still doing
The bidding of the 1%
$$$$$
Innocent people died
We were blind sighted
We came together
Only to become
Completely undone!
Sep 11, 2018
Sep 11, 2018 at 7:06 AM UTC
11:11 and fallen lashes
fountains, wells, and shootings stars
even my birthday wishes
crossing my fingers, and crossing my heart
You’re my wish, always has, always will be
just a kiss is enough to pacify me
seeing your face makes my heart burst
and it feels so good even though it hurts
you’re my wish, nothing more
just a kiss, that’s all I ask for
Jul 9, 2014
Jul 9, 2014 at 7:49 AM UTC
**Lacking of life now
I lol on my fine divan**
*Laziness often
lacks the power of rapture
as in sofa or bedsprings*
**Labour of love her
for large obese lobster me**
*Mermaids capture me
a symphony of sea-sick
rasping tongues lick our lumps*
**Little old lady
typing the language of love**
*A real cyber date
computer romance limits
operational life's love*
**Laughing over lines
of disco **** pure *******
*Lewd obscene language
grasping lemon or lime highs
to count Hollywood star shootings*
**A full length of life
the longing off, lay proceeds**
*Lady of the Lake
lunging our lisps sound depths
we are - breathing harmony*
**The land of Lincoln
legion of Lucifer's Lord**
*landscaping of lawns,
losing our liberty's law,
leaving on lights, blinding*
**Lots of Laughs or 'lol'
populist abbreviation**
*language often less,
leftovers of literate
gone to libraries of late*
May 18, 2010
May 18, 2010 at 12:38 PM UTC