Gun Rights Medley
Remember six hundred
and nine thousand
six hundred and forty
Americans died of
cancer last year and
not one shot was fired
it isn’t a gun issue it’s
a mortality issue if
they take away every-
body’s AR-15s they’ll
kill even more people with
knives we disagree on
everything else but
don’t you feel safer
to know I’m carrying
a firearm I’m a
good guy with a
gun and you hate
America so don’t you
feel safer “assault
weapon” is a made-
up fear-mongering
liberal label for weapons
designed to kill as
many people as
possible typical liberal
hypocrisy demanding
tighter gun laws
while defending
women’s reproductive
rights what next
a ban on potatoes?
´´
Envoi
I have no more poems for you—
you who tuck children under Mylar blankets
and sing them lullabies of hate;
you who cram your belly with mendacity
and puke it back into the world;
you who listen to the fiend’s mad howling
and call it the voice of God;
you who foul the nest
and gloat and wallow in excrement;
you who build a wall of steel
to sever yourself from all that’s beautiful;
you who can’t imagine
why I weep for you and pity you.
Poems are no longer for your eyes and ears.
They belong to those who still know shame.
Find shame again;
join me here in shame’s arms of thorns;
find cleansing and rebirth in shame’s fountains
so I may lay poems before you once again.
..
Wim Coleman is a playwright, poet, novelist, and nonfiction writer. His poetry has been published in SOL: English Writing in Mexico, The Opiate, Dissenting Voice, Tuck Magazine, Vita Brevis, The Esthetic Apostle, Adelaide Literary Magazine, and Dream Noir. His play The Shackles of Liberty was the winner of the 2016 Southern Playwrights Competition. Novels that he has co-authored with his wife, Pat Perrin, include Anna’s World, the Silver Medalist in the 2008 Moonbeam Awards, and The Jamais Vu Papers, a 2011 finalist for the Eric Hoffer/Montaigne Medal. Wim and Pat are members of PEN International. Blog: playsonideas.wordpress.com.
I am not a silent poet 