In Honor of the Dead and the living in Newtown, we grieve with you as we pray for you to find some peace and solace within
“The common name “Columbine” comes from the Latin meaning “dove”, due to the resemblance of the inverted flower to five doves clustered together.”
We also pray for effective gun control and for parents to protect their children from playing violent video games and for Hollywood to cease making their violent films. What’s the point??
“Bringing Peace to the World One Baby at a Time”
This poem was written after COLUMBINE – it is, unfortunately appropriate once again. Whoever reads this, please feel free to forward it and to put it on social media in its entirety and with no changes.
Thank you and Peace be with you.
Columbine Days
Real men don’t cry, they weep into the barrel of their guns,
Real men don’t cry, they rip joy from our bellies
Like great birds of prey…
Guys and dolls
Girls and dolls
Boys and dolls
Sorry, boys and guns
Football and hard padded bodies
Rolling around on 100 yards of mother earth
Patting each other’s buttocks, afraid to hug each other
It’s too un-American.
Guns and peace
Guns and penises
Power and lack of it
Blood spilled everywhere, the East and the West.
Apache helicopters, once Native Indians
Now American war planes
Ethnically cleansing other lands.
Clean up the blood at home
Sever the umbilical cords gently
Do not tear them from their mothers so soon
Do not educate them in your womb
Sing to them!
Do not send them to the computer at three
While you shop on channel T.V.
Do not send them to the video arcades
While you go off to dinner without them
They cannot dine on virtual reality.
Set the banquet table under a wide Magnolia tree
Sit with Grandma and Aunt Nellie, Uncle Manny and Sister Kate
Sit with mommy and daddy
Sit in the sun or in the shade
And let yourself be bored by the sounds of the birds and the gentle caress of the breeze.
Let yourself be bored by one more family story old or new.
Time does not exist anymore
Bombs and guns are blowing it apart
Executing a temporal abruptio, a hemorrhaging throughout the land.
There are no special moments, no languorous hours
Time is gone.
It is no longer spent, it is only bought.
There is Rolex time and Cartier time
T.V. time and movie time
There is internet time and space time and lost time and dying time.
Where is the sweet scented time of the Columbine
The real time, the time of healing
The time that we all need to spend with each other
Rocking chair time, breast feeding time
Silent time, weaving time, indigenous time.
Where is the I be sittin here time?
©Michelle O’Neill, 1999
Michelle Leclaire O’Neill Ph.D., R.N., www.leclairemethod.com