December 14th, 2017

Five years ago tomorrow. A draft written the day after, thrown away, written again. Part of me finally understood what Theodor Adorno meant that to write after such an atrocity is 'barbaric,' and the other part mourned - primarily for the children and the teachers who shielded kids with their bodies. Then the mourning shifted to the knowledge that groups of people would never have enough common ground to understand each other -- because when you accept children as 'collateral damage' in an ideological fight you have crossed a threshold past understanding.

Yet it was not about the evils of a weapon where the primary purpose was to kill. I'd had many conversations about responsible use, understanding the power we held and the danger of letting it into the wrong hands, while cleaning weapons. And it wasn't as simple as a mental health issue. It's also a rage issue. And a history of violence issue. And most of all an issue where we no longer see the person on the other side of our argument.

'Watching the Newtown Coverage While Cleaning a Weapon

Silence has blasted through the small screen
and his careless quarry lies testament:
a plate lies face down in the basin;

a towel sags lifeless on a cold stove;
empty jeans have rolled from the sofa, legs gone limp.

Only the bodies on the muted screen move
and time moves, forward, backward.
​
Armored police park cars into a fortress and run, 
scattered, toward a building whose white walls 
burn themselves into foreign homes,

and a helicopter delivers
armchair detectives and surrogate shrinks
their gods-eye view.

The sky, two thousand miles away, constricts;

somewhere, maybe my neighbor’s house,
a man loads shells by hand, and speaks
to a blue black barrel pointing skyward
against the wall. “I told you so,” he says
to it
           as if every face in every crowd
watched and waited. For what if the sun
prying through closed drapes threatened 
to kill what grew in a dark, moist place

to take what is secured by four walls,
what he grips with cold fingers.

Some days it is what I have, to step past the door,
without barricades,
                                         to say anything
that adds sound to a neighborhood gone mute,

to walk unarmed past windows, because
a constant vigil fed by fear
                                                  is not freedom.

These days even the air refuses to move.

Grass blades slice and the clouds form a dome
overhead. A truck passes, Stars and Bars
filling the rear window; a face looks with contempt.

With effort, I realize none of that is true.

Three doors down a child, playing alone,
retrieves his ball from a neighbor’s yard.
He has not learned to be afraid of boundaries,
does not wonder what eyes lurk behind each window,
and his breath comes natural.

Somewhere, a man prays for an unseen hand
to strike down what he fears.

Another man prays for the words, to walk next door,
and say “hello” to strangers.

I realize I am one of them
and I do not know which

but I am outside, wondering
if God has the volume turned up,
if he is tired of watching funerals,
if he is tired of both shooter and victim
          screaming in his ear.
​
Or, maybe with the world on mute
he sees only a solitary hand curl, which
looks clasped in prayer, which
looks like a fist shaking toward heaven, which
looks like a lover’s hand holding another, which
looks like a mother’s holding the smaller hand of a child, which
looks like a hand wrapping around a pistol grip
           as if nothing else matters.'

(c) 2017 from Contested Terrain