21 Violence, a Natural Thing

Neither our thoughts nor prayers
further safety. “They came up
     and died
just like they do every year
     in the schools.”

     The violence
feeds upon thoughts, feelings, prayers,
          To breed      more,
a national emergency as the children die.

This ugly campaign is an epidemic
     of a country
striving toward (within) self-preservation of freedom,
     a call we heard and answered
in the constitution of a country
     indistinctive yammering
from which the nation would spring,

freedom not in the cave where the
     cries bellow
but in the streets screaming, hands-tied,
     forcedly begging.

This is one picture apt for the mind.

A second: a school photographed by Getty Images,
where this year’s devastated parents
     lie on the ground.
The forlorn teachers wear
     new name tags,
       the same,

“a little weary, a little contrived”,

their only beauty to be
     all sacrificing.