Poems: So Soon and Footprints of the Fallen

So Soon 

 

So soon so soon

Just yesterday was June, 

Children and teachers dying,

People shopping, people praying

People lying on floors, on streets in places

Where their bodies, where their blood, 

Shouldn’t be lying

 

Sometimes only days apart again we’re asking why

So soon, barely now July,

Again people had gathered to celebrate, 

Instead, leaving behind more innocent blood 

to consecrate 

Ground that ought not be stained,

More rhetoric, more prayers, another list of names 

 

So soon, so soon

Left scattered on the ground,

In haste to get away from the terror, panic of the sound –

A stroller, a torn barely started bag of chips,

Baseball hats, a purse, broken sunglasses, crushed lipstick –

All left in chaos of a moments clatter 

Where protecting loved ones is all that matters

 

So soon, so soon

Now the blood gets washed and scrubbed and fades into another day

The departed souls sewn into the hearts of those that stay

While the grieving goes on as long as it will

Another aberrated mind is out there still.

Do you read and hold your breath at the news,

Wondering who next will leave behind their shoes?  

 

note: I have too many poems like this. Here is one more.

 

Footprints of the Fallen 

 

Foggy morning dew weighs heavy 

On regimental rows of blood-stained grass,

So many fallen blades sacrificed 

Under shoes of violent acts 

 

Guns giving violence a voice,

That need not shout so loud,

Less guns less deadly choices,

Yet, 

bullets keep shattering villages, 

Indiscriminately mowing down the crowd

 

Bloody footprints walk to heaven

As we totter in our morass, 

Trails of red-tinged dew remain, 

Till the next cutting of the grass