#PicturePoetryPrompt: Gun Control

From North of the border,
I watch my American friends
suffer time and again.
A vicious cycle repeating.

Bullets fired from GUNS
are worth more than
LIVES
I hear again and again.

And yet there’s a growing chorus
Of voices.
Young
Old
Female
Male
Gay
Straight
Black
White.

They scream for CONTROL
United against a bigger threat.
They don’t want to hide
Afraid and alone
from angry people who take their rage
like tidal waves
and crash into innocents.

They want change.
Not to take all the GUNS away
But to restrict the types
Create stiffer rules.
What threat is this
to your freedoms,
My GUN owning friends?

They should be free
to feel SAFE
In a Grocery store
In a School
At a Concert
At a Hospital
At a Synagogue
At a Church

ANYWHERE.

But the NRA has friends
who view CONTROL
as an evil worse than plague
WHICH IT’S NOT.
When did your fellow Americans’ LIVES
come to mean so little?

I see this on my screens
In our papers.
As a Canadian,
I’m thankful for our GUN CONTROL.
I feel SAFE.
If only the change Americans need
would come on swift wings.
I wish you all could feel SAFE
On every day’s journeys.

You see,
I think no man, woman or child
should be afraid to leave their home
for fear of flying bullets
shot from vicious GUNS
hunting them down.

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Savagery’s Cost

Blood fed the barren ground

Bodies decorated it

Like discarded toys.

Swords pierced the Earth

Beside the crippled, lifeless corpses

And yet

There was a Beauty in this Darkness

In the Savagery of War.

Life fled this land

Once rife with the green blades of Grass

Replaced now by blades of Iron and Steel.

For what, they ask

The Glory of Battle, the Honour it gave.

No structures of stone or wood

Stood in sight of the horizon.

A vast Nothingness claimed these lives

And Nature would take its Victims.

Limbs bared to Bones, sinking in dirt.

Rust from fruitless rains would claim the soiled metal.

The Shadows of carrion birds’ wings filled the sky

Their caws shredded the Silence, deafening.

Beaks ripped at stripped Flesh

As the Sun set, its rays of Light frightened by the field.

It seems a Horrible Dream.

An Evil that Desecrates the Human Soul.

Wars are waged, the Cost ignored.