Every child is my child.  Every child is our child. It takes a village to raise the world.



So, what's this all about?  Unfortunately, it's the same story over and over again. History repeats.  We repost.  Lack of leadership has not changed and Democracy as it is is failing the American people. 

As of this time from news updates, 21 killed in Texas elementary school shooting.  This strikes after recent mass shootings, one at the Buffalo supermarket where 18 year old, Payton Grendon, killed ten people in a predominately black neighborhood as he livestreamed it on Discord.  And not too long before that there were a couple of  shootings in South Carolina.  The frequency in this scourge as seen in the Gun Violence Archive is horrifying.

We are sick of thoughts and prayers, mere sentiments with no action for policy and change.  Sentiments versus action.  What will our leaders choose?  



Rolling Stone put out an article on the despicable coverage of Fox News where "Conservative media responded to the massacre by speculating recklessly and pushing every harebrained solution imaginable — except gun control."

The Atlantic put one out on the real reason America does not have gun control, revealing the cracks in our Democracy.



#windowtablechairs

When I was a kid at school

I remember looking

Out the window

With my ears 

Stinging

In the wake of alarms

Ringing

Me down 

On my knees

Under the table

Moving away my chair

Then we were taught to

Wait and be Still

And Line up

But the lesson’s changed to

Run out the windows

Hide and barricade those doors with tables

Fight and weaponize those chairs

RUN

HIDE

& FIGHT

For your life like it depends on it

Because it might

And maybe will

Now drills are more for than just

Earthquakes and Fire

Arms have been added

Loaded with a shooter’s desire

To actively kill

Now that ghost guns are sold like candy

We’re stuck with memories like Columbine and Sandy

With a side of Thoughts & Prayers

Instead of just memories of

Looking out windows 

Getting under tables

And moving chairs


I went back in time to change a couple of words in a poem I wrote after the world witnessed George Floyd's terrible passing:

American anxiety 

Is an underbelly of knots 

Tied in with the times 

Politicking with the clock

As the senate’s influence is  sold 

And bought 

While a paranoid right 

Hold their guns tight

And yet 

Again and again 

Another kid’s shot 

American anxiety ties not so neatly in 

This knot 

Of words 

Where apprehension finds its home 

This tired poem 

Running out like that last child’s breath  

Just another day 

Just another death

Because death brings no trouble  

When their clock runs out time

A pulse out of rhythm 

This poem out of rhyme 

Still senate doing nothing 

Might as well resign 

This

#rhymetime