EMMA

Emma Gonzalez

by Iman, David Bowie's widow

from facebook

She stood strong as a warrior,
with steadfast eyes that have seen
a thousand heartbreaking tomorrows.
For six minutes and twenty seconds,
silence bored into our hearts
like lances, like jackhammers,
like woodpeckers whose rat-tat-tat beaks
were pointing out the missing pieces
of our souls.
The silence was as loud
as a billion children screaming
they have waited too long
for us to become wise, become sane,
to build a better, not Mad Hatter, world.

Her tears were our tears.
They watered our psyches:
for children lost,
for gunmen with weapons of war
in school hallways,
coming to slay our round-cheeked babies,
for gangs on the streets, for drive-by shootings,
for domestic murder, for the shooting
of black men with cell phones twenty times
while wearing a police uniform.

Will there ever be an end to her tears?
to the bullshit? to society broken
beyond re-imagining?

We are seeing things
we can never un-see:
men with dead eyes and hollow hearts
laying waste the future of the young,
and the present of everyone else.

Emma - David - Cameron,
and all the others:
you are warriors of a dawn
we hope will burn
the putrid decadence away.
With you, we want to rise
on this new Tomorrow
you have birthed,
re-make a world
that doesn't
make you cry.



for Shay at Fireblossom Friday: to use imagery in unexpected ways to make a better poem. The content rather took over, but I did what I could.