by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator
A group of scared and angry young people in Florida have managed to start a political conversation on guns, a conversation that their elders have tamped down and actively avoided for generations. These "kids," the latest victims, are refusing to remain silent. They will no longer sit quietly, offering themselves up as easy targets for deranged and heavily armed psychopaths. This latest group of victims will be victims no longer.
One interesting example of the power these young people are wielding occurred this week when a GOP politician in Maine tried to belittle one of the survivors form Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. State representative candidate Leslie Gibson decided that he could earn some points with Maine gun owners by going on Facebook and referring to Parkland activist student Emma Gonzalez as a "skinhead lesbian." The good ol' boys of Maine would yuk that one up, wouldn't they? Maybe a few did, but the overall national outrage was so swift and so massive that Gibson felt compelled to withdraw from the race a couple of days later. He had picked on a student, and he had lost - bigly!
These "kids" from Florida are inspiring others nationwide to get out and communicate their anger to the country and the rest of the world. They are amassing Twitter followers in the hundreds of thousands (and, in Emma Gonzalez's case, millions), conquering other social media platforms, lobbying lawmakers, holding press conferences, organizing rallies, calling out hypocrisy, and shaking the very foundations of staid old political institutions.
And they are expressing themselves in verse. Student poems on the subject of guns and shooting has proliferated to the point that it almost comprises a literary movement. Below is a poem that struck a chord with me. It is entitled "Bulletproof Teen" and the poet who penned it is Katie Hoade, a junior at a Boston area high school. Katie is just one voice in what is rapidly becoming a thundering chorus.
Bulletproof Teen
by Katie Hoade
Run, if you can
Hide, if you can't
If neither, fight
The fighting isn't to save you
It's to save the next class, the next hall
It's to give them a couple more seconds
To get there, to stop it
I'm a child, a teenager
But I am also a bulletproof vest
A diversion
A fighting chance for others
Hope in the form of a distraction
I am blood and flesh
But I need to be Kevlar and fabric
Minimal casualties
Minimal children dead
Minimal little girls and boys
Minimal college applicants
Minimal honors students
And minimal teachers and coaches
But, not none.
The Constitution doesn't allow for none.
That document is living
But will I be?
Poetry Appreciator
A group of scared and angry young people in Florida have managed to start a political conversation on guns, a conversation that their elders have tamped down and actively avoided for generations. These "kids," the latest victims, are refusing to remain silent. They will no longer sit quietly, offering themselves up as easy targets for deranged and heavily armed psychopaths. This latest group of victims will be victims no longer.
One interesting example of the power these young people are wielding occurred this week when a GOP politician in Maine tried to belittle one of the survivors form Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. State representative candidate Leslie Gibson decided that he could earn some points with Maine gun owners by going on Facebook and referring to Parkland activist student Emma Gonzalez as a "skinhead lesbian." The good ol' boys of Maine would yuk that one up, wouldn't they? Maybe a few did, but the overall national outrage was so swift and so massive that Gibson felt compelled to withdraw from the race a couple of days later. He had picked on a student, and he had lost - bigly!
These "kids" from Florida are inspiring others nationwide to get out and communicate their anger to the country and the rest of the world. They are amassing Twitter followers in the hundreds of thousands (and, in Emma Gonzalez's case, millions), conquering other social media platforms, lobbying lawmakers, holding press conferences, organizing rallies, calling out hypocrisy, and shaking the very foundations of staid old political institutions.
And they are expressing themselves in verse. Student poems on the subject of guns and shooting has proliferated to the point that it almost comprises a literary movement. Below is a poem that struck a chord with me. It is entitled "Bulletproof Teen" and the poet who penned it is Katie Hoade, a junior at a Boston area high school. Katie is just one voice in what is rapidly becoming a thundering chorus.
Bulletproof Teen
by Katie Hoade
Run, if you can
Hide, if you can't
If neither, fight
The fighting isn't to save you
It's to save the next class, the next hall
It's to give them a couple more seconds
To get there, to stop it
I'm a child, a teenager
But I am also a bulletproof vest
A diversion
A fighting chance for others
Hope in the form of a distraction
I am blood and flesh
But I need to be Kevlar and fabric
Minimal casualties
Minimal children dead
Minimal little girls and boys
Minimal college applicants
Minimal honors students
And minimal teachers and coaches
But, not none.
The Constitution doesn't allow for none.
That document is living
But will I be?
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