Fact

Posted on May 25, 2022 by j.g.lewis · Leave a comment

Guns keep killing people.
I’m just putting that out there.
I am just stating the obvious.
It is simply a fact.
It’s a fact that will continue
to prove itself correct
each time
there is a shooting.
Guns kill people,
and they keep killing people.
It is a fact.
It is.
It is common knowledge.
A common occurrence;
too common an occurrence
if you ask me, but
you needn’t ask
because the facts
speak for themselves.
Guns.
Kill.
People.
They did yesterday, and
the day before, and
last weekend multiple times
in my city (more than most
weekends, more than many
cities, and a lot more times
this year). My city is really
not that different
from any other place where
there are guns and people.
Guns are everywhere.
People are everywhere.
Guns kill people.
They did yesterday in
a very noticeable way.
We will grieve the event
and question why. We will
ask questions of ourselves
and questions of our
politicians and each other.
Fact.
And we will hope, and
we will pray, but
guns
keep
killing people
anyway.
It is a fact.
It is far too obvious.
How can we change
the fact without
allowing emotions
to become involved.
Just the facts.
How do we deal with
a fact, and how can we
alter the fact that guns
kill people?
I’m just putting that out there.
Just the fact.

I am numb. Like everyone else I was shock by the news of another school shooting. Again. It was 10 children, then 14, yesterday. This morning the headline I first read was “19 students and 1 teacher killed in Texas elementary school shooting.” I can’t write; what more can I say that hasn’t been said. It has been said again and again. I wrote this four years ago. It reads the same today as it did then. Nothing has changed. Guns kill people. It is a fact.

j.g.l.

As What Will

Posted on May 21, 2022 by j.g.lewis · Leave a comment

Frequently designated a dreamer, in perpetuum,
among many other things, he does, he admits,
allow little space to plan.
                                         Rightly or wrongly,
       this is the path
           he has ended up on. Difficult, perhaps,
             at times when cracks in the concrete led him astray.
Only recently discovered, by accident more than fault, is balance
maintained in a world cluttered with discrepancies and dogma
forced upon him by conspiracy theorists, self-serving henchmen,
Jesus freaks and hangers on, black hole believers
     and Masters of the Universe
       who continue, ad nauseam, to propagate fear.

Erstwhile encounters not forgotten, not
soon enough, minutes bypass memory, he has clung to details
     accounted for nostalgically and passionately,
      each plank of a moral platform galvanized and scandalized.
He continues, white-knuckled grip, adhering
to a belief system founded over time; tested, altered,
as deemed fit or favorable.
Fully aware and seemingly appreciative, he has crossed the line
from seeing himself merely as a character in this long drown-out drama
    to bearing witness
                  to what happens, as it happens.
He, alone, will not wait to understand, but
carpe diem, record the state of a disingenuous planet.

Each event, as it unfolds, to be accepted as what will.
No longer a second-hand story in third person narrative,
                 this first-person view could offer confusion at worst,
discomfort at least, through instant, authentic, and liberating in ways
only he will determine.   Tenet nosce.                                                                            Each element of freedom comes at a cost.
      He will taste the summer ahead, open mouthed, open-minded,
            without concern of those in the past, but
               with a belief not to get too far ahead of himself
in the dreams he conjures.
Self and the spirit pacified today with the joy offered,
     instead of looking for what
              is no longer there. It is easier that way.