*Poem: They Shot Up My Old High School

They Shot Up My Old High School

                                                                                    -for Noah

They shot up my old high school,

Xmas, Hanukah decorations still lingering in the halls.

Down by the lockers, the setting for my first kiss,

a boy with big brown eyes

laid in his own blood for hours

until the shooter was captured.

In the cafeteria, where I myself

organized the Food Fight of the Century,

doors were barred shut,

long lunch tables piled against them,

students huddled behind the hot lunch counter,

texting thanks to their moms and dads

for everything they’d ever received

in their short lives.

The big gym teacher we laughed at, until he hit a ball

out to the back bleachers, used himself

as a shield, took a dozen bullets aimed at his kids,

died in the line of duty.

We all knew the shooter, familiar site in the

principal’s office, or smoking on the docks,

hanging at the pizza place in the plaza.

The easy toys he collected, posed with

like a movie star on Facebook, got no response.

The throat of his gun had to open for them to see

how serious, how important it all was.

The school nurse, out of band-aids and hope,

resigned her post.

CAR   2/17/18