Only in the US

This used to only happen in movies,
movies I didn't want to watch
but Monday it happened again
a twice daily event on average 
in the US
Oddly, this shooter wrote a novel
naming specific names for his victims,
specific sites for his rampage
he wrote about blame and how murder
quenched his thirst

Starting at Cheesman Park
where my daughter and I had
walked in her former neighborhood,
the shooter proceeded 
down the street to murder a man
in his apartment

Oddly, too, that Cheesman Park
was built over an unkept cemetery for
paupers, where bones sometimes
unearth themselves in that movie-
sort-of-way because the headstones,
not the bodies, were relocated

My daughter has since moved 
to a suburb town where this
killing spree ended just down
the street from her new abode

We live what we write, 
we write what we live.
May I write not just about 
pretty snowfalls, intriguing
moonscapes, embracing the
unknown, may I listen to the
whisper I don't want to hear
saying, “Make this change happen,
assault weapons have no
place in a civilians’ hands”
This right to bear arms does not
uphold a well-regulated militia,
it is not necessary for a free State, 
in fact, this distortion of the second amendment*
is an antithesis of what is necessary
to maintain a free State

When will the day come when I 
speak out? I didn't last month
when a boy killed his classmates
just a few miles north of my house
When will the day come when 
we insist on common sense gun
laws that uphold the second
amendment as it was written? 
When will the day come 
when children in schools
are no longer killed in
greater numbers than our soldiers?
When? What if today is the day
I need to take that first step?

Victims of the Oxford High School, Michigan shooting

While the US has the distinction of having more mass shootings than other countries, only 22% of Americans own a gun according to a 2016 investigation by Harvard-Northeastern, and half of all guns in the US are owned by only 3% of the population.

*Text of the second amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Top photo was taken at Cheesman Park in Denver, CO in 2019. Bottom photo is a CNN compilation of the four victims of the Oxford High shooting of December, 2021.