by Dana Yost
 |
| Barry Blitt |
Awake all night.
Adrenaline attack.
Not like the attack
in Texas. Not twenty-one dead.
But fueled by that,
this adrenaline attack.
What is it in us,
in Americans,
that makes it
OK? One mass
shooting after
another.
Some plead,
some pray.
Some say
leave it alone.
Ted Cruz
says don’t
politicize it.
Ted Cruz
needs a bruise.
It has to be politicized.
It has to be debated
in the public arena.
It has to have meaning,
this debate of ours,
or else it’s meaningless,
the senselessness
goes on.
Gunmen squeeze
their triggers
and children die.
The rest of the world
looks at us and
asks “why.”
We have no answer.
We have no answer.
So I stay awake,
shaking, fretting,
swearing. We pray,
we vow, we say
never again,
but they are hollow
phrases until
we put the gun lobby
down like a dog
with a hole in its gut,
which in any logical
world would be
the case: the gun
lobby allowing
these wounds
to open, to fester,
to be picked and pulled
at until the gut is
an open sore.
Awake all night.
Adrenaline attack
the day of a school
attack, the day we mourn
yet again the loss
of little lives.
Dana Yost was an award-winning daily newspaper journalist for 29 years. Since 2008, he has published eight books. His poetry has been published in numerous reviews and magazines, including The New Verse News. Yost is a three-time Pushcart nominee in poetry.
