“In the hours after a gunman killed more than 20 people at a South Texas elementary school Tuesday, the state’s top Republicans sought to immediately squelch the possibility of gun control measures in the wake of yet another mass shooting.” – Texas Tribune

We spill talk like blood—O, I cherish you!—
but we cannot sustain the sentiment,
so we spill blood like blood, a kind of coup
against ourselves; no, I never meant
you harm, just want what’s best for my children
if not, alas, yours. Who am I to care
what happens past these walls, where evil runs
free and I’m powerless to clear the air
of hate? O, how we hate what we don’t know,
I could make a list—Black, Brown, foreign
ideas—but this’s no time for lists. Great snow
persists, though it’s summer: Why so barren,
world? The time for harvesting soon arrives,
we dare not wake what little may survive;