October 2: Las Vegas Mass Shooting, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, "26"

I have no words today after the mass shooting in Las Vegas last night.  It's news that shouldn't be familiar.  I shouldn't feel numb to innocent people shot dead in the United States.  Yet, how else can a person react in a country and culture that seems to foster this kind of senseless violence.

I know Congress will do nothing in reaction to this tragedy.  Or the President of the United States. 

So this afternoon, Saint Marty turns to poetry to find some kind of truth that makes sense.  A poem written after the killings at Sandy Hook Elementary.

 26

by:  Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Your names toll in my dreams.
I pick up tinsel in the street. A nameless god
streaks my hand with blood. I look at the lighted trees
in windows & the spindles of pine tremble
in warm rooms. The flesh of home, silent.
How quiet the bells of heaven must be, cold
with stars who cannot rhyme their brilliance
to our weapons. What rouses our lives each moment?
Nothing but life dares dying. My memory, another obituary.
My memory is a cross. Face down. A whistle in high grass.
A shadow pouring down the sill of calamity.
Your names wake me in the nearly dark hour.
The candles in our windows flicker
where your faces peer in, ask us
questions light cannot answer.