Overland Park 4/13/14

Overland Park

More stabbings and shootings and death
How much the language of war and hate
For 13 years makes this the result
That violence is the solution universal

Though no armies are raising breastworks
Verbal volleys from entrenched positions
Kill as surely as any lead ball
But not as a sacrifice upon freedom’s alter

At a small town joyful Pearblossom Parade
Two young men among thousands have pistols
With fantasies pictured of villains and heros
And the good guys always survive

The causalities groaning are left afield
Hungry homeless and those different others
In the halls of power are cast off to die
As reasonable write-offs against the bottom line

The victims are pawns given up en passant
Statistics of the other side’s callous means
All that those stricken really want is to live
So that maybe their children can thrive

Braving the fire some Nightingales venture
To succor those stranded in no-man’s-land
Receiving for reward a more intense vitriol
As bleeding-heart traitors to the cause

While the rest of us watch shaking our heads
And genuinely offer our heartfelt lament
We’ll bang our chests and rend our clothes
So hoping for more peaceful times

But there’s no such thing I’m more than afraid
In the shade of an olive branch arbor
Its been consumed so that fake people can grow
Then the innocent dead are served as dessert

Whether God is invoked or be set aside
We’re still fighting our country’s last war
While each revolution creates its own rules
This looks like the same old game

And we die and while briefly mourned
Something bigger soon comes along
Seeming more threatening it trends our attention
Because more innocence has died.