The Gun - a response to events in the US

Sunday 30th December 2012 4:50 pm

I wrote this piece after the events at Newtown and crazy reaction from those deluded enough to think that more guns equals safer country. They have 300 million guns and one of the highest murder rates in the world. As a poet, as an American who is also british, as a father, I wrote this response.

HOW MANY MORE?

Where can I start, but the young ones, their hearts

Are filled to bursting with your dark arts,

Why won’t you say, and who’s in your pay?

Can’t they see that it’s simply the gun?

You say that it’s people, the mental unwell,

And this is the way that you weave your spell

But here in Britain, the angry and bitter,

Lacking in guns, tweet their filth and their twitter

And though such bullying’s shameful and wrong,

It’s tiny compared to the bullet’s bright song.

So stop with your lying! Your people are dying!

Can’t you see that it’s simply the gun?

For if anyone, anyone wishes to die,

It’s so easy to walk to a store and to buy

The answer for him or any he hates,

The trigger that hands out tumbling fates.

Can’t you see that it’s simply the gun?

And it makes me ashamed of the USA

My American father, your have a nice day,

For what has been born is a race for more,

Statistics like skylarks flutter and soar,

And houses are fortresses, locked up tight

And war not abroad, but the bringer of night

Where death is only a finger away

This my friends is the American way

Can’t you see that it’s simply the gun?

And God, were he watching, would turn in her grave

To see all the cowards, the death of the brave

And forgiveness available tied to a chair,

Oh America the noble, the free and the fair

Can’t you see that it’s simply the gun

And since when did the phrase ‘the right to bear arms’

Become such a hammer, for beating out harms,

For those on the far, the have-to-be-right

Who don’t give a damn how endless the night

Will be for the young who receive its dark charms

Can’t you see that it’s simply the gun?

America please, must I beg on my knees

How many must kneel, and finally fly

The cruel communion, the exit, the sigh

This right that politically you think you’ve won

How many more massacres, thanks to the gun?

Your leaders are liars who live for the vote,

Spouters of platitudes practiced by rote

They say that today is just not the day,

And bless all that cash from the NRA

Never to be taken from my cold dead hands,

Our grief is a growth in your cancerous lands,

Oh America how does your conscience sleep

With mothers and fathers try not to weep?

This the eclipse that shoots out the sun,

Can’t you see that it’s simply the gun?

Andrew Fusek Peters December 2012

guns america political poetry performance poetry second amendment

Comments

Andrew Peters

Mon 31st Dec 2012 20:24

Thanks Mike, I am truly humbled and honoured by your comments - I told my wife and daughter and they reminded me that that is why I write - to reach out to others. please feel free to pass it on. All my best. Andrew

Andrew Peters

Mon 31st Dec 2012 20:12

‘What Seest Thou Else?’

There once was a man who fell in love with Darkness. And this Darkness was available to buy even during daylight hours, even to a man who had obviously sold his hopes to the dusk. When the purveyors of night saw him coming, they licked their thin lips, and felt leaves of gold blossom in the empty vaults of their cold, dead hearts.

They, who displayed Darkness in all the shapes, sizes and colours of the un-rainbow, smiled at the man who fell in love with the Darkness. They agreed with his choices, praised his discernment, happy for the moment that forever denied the existence of the gods of consequence, and let him go on his way.

The man who fell head over heels for Darkness, now cradled it in his arms like a babe, crooning sweet nothings as he took it away. At first, the Darkness permitted such indulgence. Once unwrapped, it let him stroke, and pamper and boast about its extravagant charms.

But the Darkness was not satisfied with such half-heartedness, such lack of commitment. Words were all very well. It was deeds that would make him a hero. The Darkness followed him everywhere, stuck to his body like a shadow. Only at noon, with the sun high overhead, did shadows dissipate, and, as the Darkness bloomed like black roses in his hurting head, the man began to entertain doubts. Yet doubts were for the weak, the bullied, the ill. He was strong, the owner of all that night had to offer.

And it came to pass that the man decided he had to share his gift with the many, to bring the Darkness, to display its glory in broad daylight. Then he would be remembered as a man who, like Icarus, took on the sun and won. And on the appointed day, at the anointed, unholy hour he came to the place of great potential and let the Darkness pour forth.

Let us not dwell too much on what the Darkness did then, except to say it exceeded all expectation. So much so that others who came from that blind country besieged the stores where Darkness lay in abundance and emptied them out, lock, stock and barrel.

Sadly, there were a few mothers and fathers who became blinded to the Darkness’s many attractions. But even their grief was good for business as usual. As the moderate spoke about the need for daylight, for insight, there were others, the mad-unholy ones who twisted logic into blindfolds to hand out to any would give them money. In their righteousness, they declared that the only way you can beat Darkness is to put it in the hands of every single citizen, for the more Darkness there is, the better we will be able to see. And the podium they stood on was built from the bones of children.

As for the man himself, he was swallowed by the cold tongue of twilight. His turn was done, the baton passed. For once there was a man who fell in love with the Darkness…. And all shall be well. And all shall be well. And all manner of things shall be well.

Andrew Fusek Peters 2012

M.C. Newberry

Mon 31st Dec 2012 17:41

Looking for the CAUSE for the deed...

It is easy to loathe what is feared
And fear what is misunderstood,
When a gun is used for bad reasons,
We forget the times it does good.
We'd rather not face the reality
That it's humans who do those bad things
A gun does not choose your morality
Or decide whose doorbell death rings.
By all means restrict those who own them,
Subject them to every last rule;
A gun can protect in the right hands
But it's dangerous in the hands of a fool.
And America, the land of the therapist
And the pill for every perceived ill,
Blithely ignores the peril
Of how tablets make people kill.
So, whilst youngsters get fed medications
To chemically "control" their behaviour
By parents and profiting corporations
Who ignore their main roles as "saviour",
"Inexplicable" gun tragedies will happen,
The culprit may be caught and condemned,
But the weapon that was used will be guilty,
More than the person who was known to offend.
Keep it quiet that his mind was affected,
By the effects of what he was on,
That a society thought fit to prescribe
Before the deed he embarked on.
It's easier to blame the gun that was used,
Much easier and acceptable by far,
But when a drugged driver mows down a bus queue
Do we hear of the dangerous car?

Noetic-fret!

Sun 30th Dec 2012 23:40

Further to my last, on my facebook page which is also frequented by ex soldiers like I; they are singing your praises.

Best wishes at this time

Mike

Noetic-fret!

Sun 30th Dec 2012 23:38

Hi Andrew, I cannot congratulate you enough for the words you have written here. It amplifies the way I feel about gun laws after the recent events in the USA. Well done my fellow poet. I could not have put it better myself.

I was so compelled by your poem that I pasted it on my facebook page to show those nearest and dearest the sentiments that not only I feel but others too. I hope you don't mind this. I have never done it for other poets but your poem is so damned accurate, profoundly accurate that I cannot congratulate you enough on having the strength to say these words and tell it like it is.

Thank you Andrew.

Mike

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