Our Community Will Heal

by Catherine Giordano  

The front page
of the Orlando Sentinel

The horror.

The outrage.

The grief.

The worst mass shooting

in American history.

A heinous act of brutality.

A massacre of 50 souls.

The wounding of dozens more.

A community in mourning.

Coming together,

To honor and remember the dead,

To comfort their families

Orlando

Uniting, Enduring,

in the midst of tragedy.

Orlando strong!

© Catherine Giordano

June 2012

Every now and then, something so noteworthy happens that I feel compelled to make note of it with a news print poem.  The terrorist attack on a nightclub in Orlando, Florida in the early hours of Sunday morning (around 2 AM), June 12, 2016 was that type of event. On the following Monday, The Orlando Sentinel printed a front page stand-alone editorial which became the basis of this poem. 

Navy Yard Shooting

A two-hour shooting rampage—

Twelve people shot to death.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

Shots fired.

A dozen died.

Another act of violence.

Another mass shooting.

Another rampage.

There is something evil in our society.

There is something wrong.

Another massacre.  Another day of hand-wringing.  Another day of inaction on gun safety. 

©  Catherine Giordano 2013

Please share by tweeting, "liking" on facebook, and "+1 ing."

Please ""follow" so you don't miss any of my posts.

Is this our only option now?  Click here to look inside.

Christmas Mourning

Christmas is everywhere here.

Christmas is nowhere here.

The town Christmas tree

sparkling with light,

standing stoic,

standing beautiful;

facing a cemetery

dotted with new graves.

Keeping traditions from the past.

Needing Christmas more than ever.

Making sure Christmas lives on here

We want the town of Newtown

to remember this Christmas

for the thousand acts of kindness,

not for the singular act of madness.

© 2012 Catherine Giordano

Please share this poem by tweeting, "liking" on facebook, and "+1 ing" on google circles.

Please "follow" so you don't miss any of my poems.

Christmas this year is tinged with sadness as the nation mourns for Newtown.  Your brave determination to carry on traditions despite your personal grief is a tribute to the human spirit. 

This picture of the Newtown Christmas tree is from USAtoday.

Consoling Families, Town, Nation

We bear a responsibility for every child.

Our first task is caring for our children.

If we don’t get that right,

we don’t get anything right.

Newton,

We have wept with you.

Newtown,

You are not alone.

This is from the speech Obama gave at the Newtown memorial Service on Sunday night.  There’s nothing more I can say, except bring back the ban on assault rifles.

© 2012 Catherine Giordano

Please share this poem by tweeting, "liking" on facebook, and "+1 ing" on google circles.

Please "follow" so you don't miss any of my poems.

This picture of Newtown angels is from http://timesofnews.co/

A Teary Obama

Click Here to Look Inside

We've endured too many

of these tragedies

in the past few years.

Each time I react not as a president,

but as anybody else would—

as a parent.

And that was especially true today.

I know there's not a parent in America

who doesn't feel the same overwhelming grief.

The majority of those who died

were children—

beautiful, little kids.

They had their entire lives ahead of them —

birthdays, graduations,

weddings, kids of their own.

Among the fallen were teachers,

men and women who devoted their lives

to helping our children fulfill their dreams."

So our hearts are broken today

for the parents and grandparents,

for the sisters and brothers

for the families of those who were lost."

Our hearts are broken today

for the parents of the survivors,

blessed as they are

to have their children home tonight.

They know that their children's innocence

has been torn away from them too early

and there are no words

that will ease their pain."

As a country,

we have been through this too many times.

an elementary school in Newtown,

a shopping mall in Oregon,

a temple in Wisconsin,

a movie theater in Aurora,

r a street corner in Chicago.

These neighborhoods

are our neighborhoods;

these children are our children.

We’ll hug our children a little tighter,

we'll tell them that we love them,

we'll remind each other how deeply

we love one another.

May God bless

the memory of the victims

and heal the brokenhearted

and bind up their wounds.

I took the text of Obama’s speech to the nation about the massacre in Connecticut and condensed it a little and inserted line breaks to achieve this poem. It was a very poetic and beautiful speech.

My thoughts kept returning to two things.  In the Orlando Sentinel yesterday, printed before the shooting happened, the paper printed a tweet from Andy Borowitz: “Maybe I’m a dreamer, but I wish mental health care was as easy to get as say, a gun.”

The other thought was about the Christmas presents the families of these slain children probably had hidden in their closets, all wrapped and ready for Christmas morning, the parents imagining the joy on their children’s faces when they opened these presents, these presents that these children will now never receive.

© 2012 Catherine Giordano

Please share this poem by tweeting, "liking" on facebook, and "+1 ing"

Please "follow" so you don't miss any of my poems.

The picture of President Obama speaking to the nation
 about the Connecticut shooting is from
http://bigstory.ap.org

Empire State Gunman

Jeffrey put on a suit,
left his Manhattan apartment,
headed to the Empire State Building,
and shot his former boss.

Repeatedly, in the head.

The victim lay dead on the sidewalk.
Jeffrey kept shooting.
The third mass shooting in five weeks.

Bystanders began screaming.

Everybody was running.
Two police officers, fired on him.
Jeffrey was killed.

The neighbors described him.

“A quiet man.”
“The nicest guy.”

I’m so sorry to have to write about another shooting rampage, this time in New York City at the empire state building.  The newspaper said that it was a sunny morning with tourists lined up to take a tour and workers streaming into the building headed for their offices.

 © 2012 Catherine Giordano

I found this picture at http://www.globalpost.com

Sikh Killings

This picture is from http://revelandriot.com

Another senseless shooting.
Another tragic loss of life.
Another violent hate-filled attack
in America.

An attack on the very essence,

the very definition,
of the United States
of America.

Sikhs, work for the well-being

of our nation,
Sikhs, part of the mosaic
of America.

An attack on a Sikh temple,

it is part of the trend
of violence and extremism
in America.

Too many guns,

Too many out-of-control people
We must have gun control
in America.

How many more will die in America for the sake of the profits of the gun industry?

 © 2012 Catherine Giordano

Please share by tweeting, "liking" on facebook, and "+1 ing" on google circles.

Please ""follow" so you don't miss any of my reviews.