Why Die So Young, Why Die So Innocent In Classrooms Poem by John Sensele

Narratives of students shot in cold blood
Not on a shooting range
Draw a mass media headline flood
Background check seems a request strange

To diehard hearts hooked to the dollar
From a gun lobby kitty
Whose grip on petrified leadership as though in a kraal
Where they plead not guilty

Turning eyes the other side
Mouthing unmeant condolences
Snide pride to deride
Demands for action that advances

A search for a permanent solution
To the systemic slaughter
Repeated, replayed in lugubrious fashion
Without on petrified mouths laughter

As innocent boys and girls scamper for cover
Under lethal fire
Parents struggling to discover
In ire

If Maggie made it to safety
If Jack hid under a desk
If security agents on duty
Passersby and onlookers they frisk

Asking why students ought to die so young
In their classrooms
As though their lives were dung
Treated with scanty respect like cannon fodder grooms

Doomed in gloom to die
At the hands of loose guns
In the most powerful nation that lives a lie

Showing ineptitude

To resolve student mass murders
As a gun lobby habitude with a tongue in cheek attitude
Whose attention is glued to gun backorders
In paradoxical attitude at a somber latitude.