Saturday, December 1, 2018

day SIX HUNDRED and EIGHTY ONE

Thank you to all the wonderful voices that we had on WineDrunk SideWalk for women's month in November. We hope to do this again shortly.  But here we are....day Six Hundred and Eighty One of this horrific nonsense.  And we need to keep this blog going. So send your poems/fiction/rants/essays/photography etc....ART....SUBMIT2RESIST: winedrunksidewalk AT gmail DOT com


Saturday as my City Bleeds

with the morning news
sitting like a rock
in my stomach
I still thought
lunch was a good idea
as a siren comes
audible
the restaurant stops
the air goes out of the room
everyone holds on
tried to move on
like nothing happened
then this reminder

the rest of the country
will send thoughts and prayers
and for twenty-four hours
we’ll mourn eleven dead
there will be another thirty
second debate
about our love affair with guns
the name Robert Bowers
will be committed to a register
a database with other
mass shooters and no one
will remember the victim’s names
except here in Pittsburgh
except their families

Screw your optics, I’m going in
another white man disaffected
the media will loathe to call
him a terrorist, he doesn’t fit
the profile we assume
the one made popular after 9/11
but when you commit murder
when you take lives
when you shout
All Jews must die!
as you finger the trigger
of an ak-47
let there be no mistake
that is what you are

the problem here is
it’s just another statistic
even in Pittsburgh

where
Richard Poplawski
an ex-marine
boarded himself into his apartment
took the lives of three police officers
after anti-obama
and anti-zionist ravings

where
George Sodini
walked into a LA Fitness
killed three women
then himself
all because he blamed
women, not himself
for his inability to find
a mate

where
John Shick
killed one
shot seven
before the police
gunned him down
he had been plagued
by harassment complaints
from women, it’s said
that his neighbors avoided him

as I type this poem
notifications
on my computer
ring
people mark themselves
safe

how fucked up is it
to wake up
to an active
shooter warning
in a neighborhood
I travel through
almost everyday

how fucked up is it
that you can’t feel safe
in a place of worship
in a movie theater
while you exercise
in a hospital
in a school
in a bar
in your workplace
on the street
as a woman
as a person of color
as a trans person
as a jew
ultimately
and simply
as a human

I wonder
how much blood
do you need America?

--Jason Baldinger

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