TWO VARIATIONS ON A TRIOLET WITH REFRAINS FROM PRESIDENT OBAMA’S STATEMENT ON THE SHOOTING IN ROSEBURG, OREGON
There’s been another mass shooting—
somehow this has become routine
as brushing teeth, and we go shouting,
“There’s been another mass shooting!”
while lax-lawed guns go on polluting
our world like a gas-powered machine.
There’s been another mass shooting.
Somehow this has become routine.
Somehow this has become routine:
There’s been another mass shooting,
a disease for which there’s no vaccine.
Somehow this has become routine
and though mad at the bloody scene
we let gun nuts go right on shooting.
Somehow this has become routine.
There’s been another mass shooting.
—Poets Respond
October 4, 2015
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Gary Leising: “This is a response to the recent mass-shooting at Umpqua Community College, and it shares what I see as the President’s frustration at our nation’s inability to pass common sense legislation to prevent such violence.”
