Some are guilty, all are responsible. ~Abraham Joshua Heschel

While men called adults keep playing the same old demented games where no one ever wins both sides always lose each side justifying violence so that violence and anguish and death and trauma and hate continue their win streaks and turn the air and water and land toxic and repulsive and turn to stone the golden children of mimicry who think it’s play with their wooden swords and guns as the fingers of mothers who know better pull tears pull skin from their eyes to their chins and Rachel is heard weeping for her children and Zara is heard weeping for hers as Mrs. O’Malley wept for her boy and Mrs. Smith wept for her son and the mothers and fathers of Addie Mae and Carol Denise and Carole Rosamond and Cynthia Dionne wept for their girls they thought safe in a church they assumed no bomb would ever attend and the sun rises on days where nothing and no one has the wherewithal to bloom and the children—on either side of walls or steel fences or barbed wire that people forget were once not there—become fewer thanks to bombs and bullets and grow more frightened and grow old and dark as books in dank basements their little bodies holding more than bodies are meant to hold and their little minds and hearts are like those of children whose parents drink to get drunk every night and the children say, swear, promise themselves they will never be like mom who’s always sauced or like dad who’s always pissed or passed out but promises are meant to be broken they find themselves saying in their teens and the drink becomes hatred passed on from generation to generation and it’s Second Captain first choose and I pick God for our side and what goes around comes around like the not-so-merry-go-round those called adults continue to push until one day a few decide not to and say enough is enough and some on the round-about let go and fall off or courageously jump off and roll like tumbleweeds and dust themselves off and say this is a broken record that will never play a song other than lamentation, other than the blues, other than us versus them, this is a movie we’ve seen a hundred times before and know how it will end, and it’s no Hollywood ending, it’s no ending at all, it’s merely a pause to lock and load, and it’s a bitter foul taste that stays in the mouth and attacks the heart until someones decide to begin to push back the other way, push to wage peace instead of war, push for dialogue instead of diatribe, push to end the cycle of violence for God’s sake but mostly for the children’s sake and the sake of all the earth. Kyrie eleison. Amen.

ZOMBIE

Songwriters: Dolores Mary O’Riordan

♣ GOODPEOPLE ♣

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