I heard about the tragedy today at the Platte Canyon High School in Colorado, and then tonight I read the AOL news report on just what happened. It all makes no sense to me just as Columbine made me feel. I read that the gunman, an older guy, shot a 16 year old girl named Emily Keyes, and then himself. I just don't get it. I don't understand how evil can take advantage of innocence in the form of some unnamed man, armed and ready to die, for his own cowardice. My heart breaks for that community and those kids at that high school. Not to mention the younger kids who might have questions about what happened. I cannot imagine being a parent right now in that community...not to mention how Emily's parents are doing and what they must be going through. So, tonight, I had to write about it...in some way. I guess you could say this is some sort of poetry, although it's closer to what I would say if I were journaling it all. I wanted to talk about it. For example, I hate how the media sensationalizes violence such as today, and then as we have heard it before, the media has the gaul to ask why our youth today are so disconnected and numb to the world around them. The media is the real psychotic bagman passing to us, the violent content they feed on which we willingly are fed. Sick. Anyway, these words are for Emily. She didn't deserve any of this, not today, not ever. More later...

pointless seconds …
9/27/06

for the community of Platte Canyon High:
the usefulness of senselessness is maddening
for the conscientiously sensitive people.
the punishment is never enough to justify
the brutality of surviving enough to only live.
were the questions enough to suffice the curious
and feed the media its bites and chokes of need to know.
but, the legs too scared to run,
and the tears too big to quit,
remind the world that armed madmen run rampant
across the open fields of innocence and hope.
is there no regret in the eyes of we who assume comfort,
or we who want to forget tragic reciprocity to the ignored?
when do the generations to come,
with their entire God blessed being,
realize how safe their education into the world should be?
to the ones who cry out their grief,
who heard the cries of fear echo throughout corridors,
who were given choices to stay and be played upon,
who thought nothing at all but their families,
these are the ones who glimpsed evil in its face,
and now remember its aroma of death in their midst.
what about the ones to young to realize?
are the words ever enough to explain the reasons why?
Emily Keyes…
God, it was not her intention to die in her youth,
in her fear, in her solitude, by the hand of cowardice.
wrap your arms tightly around this one God,
for someone so young to see your face now,
makes no sense to those of us this side of death.
for we are the ones who hold the pain tightly as to why…
wrap your arms around the grief, the hurt, the loss.
for only you God can make sense out of such tragedy…
because not one of us can ever realize
why schools have become modern day venues of assassination.
not one of us…
where is the good to arise?
where is the healing starting?
how tight are the hugs tonight?
when is it all going to change,
so that your creation treats itself as one world,
one body, one people, one love?
may it be realized now,
now that death once again speaks to the division
humanity suffers by and is alone with.
can we ever become one,
so that no one person make the choice
to take the life of another?
God, I hope so…