Poetry

fibonacci blue photo

By

Ben White

Loaded With Lead

A rifle

Loaded with lead

Left seventeen dead a month ago

In a Florida school,

And the cruel facts

Revealed the cracks of America’s need

To see children bleed celebrating

The knock-down power

Of blaming

Mental health no-one

Takes the time

To address

And less time

To confess the sickness

Of striving

For projected masculinity

In the affinity for trigger time

While horrendous crime sells rifles

And the Constitution

Stifles common sense

With profits and re-elections

Without vision

Or direction towards

A safe and solid society –

And in Tennessee,

Schools don’t have the tools to stop

Lead from endangering

Their children either –

But it’s not the fever and lead

Of mass shooters –

It’s water coolers

With lead in the pipes

Where death comes slow,

But leaves the future

Just as dead.

Ben White

Author of the books, Buddha Bastinado Blues and The Kill Gene, Ben White thought he was a poet, only to find out he is not a poet at all. He is a witness. What he writes is testimony.