American Pandemic Bruce Silverman

[Larry Robinson]

American Pandemic

we’ve chronicled the most deaths this year, families 
distant, never close enough to hold the hands of loved
ones passing from this world, alone and confused, 

taken needlessly. “it didn’t have to be this way” they say,
the daily numbers mount, the hapless art of humanizing
a life cut short but an empty gesture crafted by the grieving,

this was a grandfather’s knee that might have been a rocking
chair for a story hungry wide-eyed child, this might have been 
a twinkle-eyed aunt who could intervene in a troubled moment,

this was a father, a single mother, a soccer coach, a neighbor, 
a nurse who’d save others, a future scientist who’d discover
a gene that would save others, this was the lone source of love

for a brother, a teenager, a sibling, a parent, and the too
many we have lost in this cruel flash in time that someday
will be remembered in the halls of shame for how we so

callously ignored what was so obvious, so meaningless,
so unnecessary, so stuffed with denial and dripping with
screaming body fluids and shattered organs. 

Yes . . .  this is called gun violence.

	- Bruce Silverman












 “When we change the ‘I’ for the ‘We,’ even Illness becomes Wellness.” - Malcolm X






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