There are no words
To describe the screams of children.
When horror after horror
Tumbles down the newspaper pages
Ink running like blood
And the nightmare of guns and violence
Continues unabated.
How many mothers, children,
Fathers, sons, daughters, friends, lovers
Must we continue to lose
To the unending madness of madness?
Whose rights are we
Preserving when the most vulnerable
Remain unprotected?
Do we arm every student
Every teacher, administrator, parent?
Should bullets replace candy
When an answer is correctly given in class?
Is the answer to
The fear of the atomic bomb; Pakistan, Iran, Syria,
To give one to every country?
How many tears
Will be enough to cleanse ourselves
Of the almost daily
Horrors that we enable and support
With our silence?
How many schools and malls and parks
Must we scrub
With bleach and ammonia and scalding water
To erase the
rust colored stains from our memories?
And how long till
We forget? How many days or weeks
Will pass before
The ritual of death, like a biblical plague
Returns to take
Our first, second, third, fourth born
Children away again?
How much longer
Can we continue to pay the cost
Of inaction?
How much longer will we be greeted
With the acrid
Smoke, the loud pops, and the sounds
And images of bodies
Laying like so many ragdolls among the debris?
There are no words
To describe the screams of children.
But in America
We have heard their sound so many times now
Words are no longer needed.
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