Sounds of rifle fire crack open the heart
at an elementary school again.
Classroom chairs empty of daughters and sons.
Children shot in a lesson plan made in
deranged anger, depressed and apart
through disappointed failure – a false start
seen by eyes unable to read beyond Cain,
who plotted the first murder without guns.
Twenty-one crosses call from the ground.
Why are we unable to hear their sound?
Torrents of gun rights drown us in a flood,
providing AR-15’s to disturbed teens,
who turn white boards into splattered blood.
Lives robbed: voices echo through shattered pain.
The Republic is ruled by cowards and fiends.
