Poetry

Lorie Shaull photo

By

Ben White

Rallies

One hundred, eighty-five thousand

Students across America

Walked out of class

For seventeen minutes

Marking a month

After seventeen children

Were killed –

Shot with an assault rifle –

In Florida.

However,

The local high school

Did not participate,

Choosing instead

To hold a spring sport assembly.

Current events

Form memories

That guide future behaviors,

So the NRA-funded

Government

Is autonomously safe

From universal

Public intervention

As responsibility

Is lost on the local kids

Whose future communities

Will look like pep rallies

For the continued dangers

Of social complacency

And civic ignorance.

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.