Silence – A Spoken Word Poem

I felt like I hadn’t finished talking about the past few days. It’s been such a horrific, and frightening few days, and the world had suffered loss without any justifiable reason. So I wanted to write a spoken word poem about the shootings, and about my opinion.   Let me know what you think.

Updated: below is the video I recorded today, please watch and share around.

Silence – A Spoken Word Poem 

Saturday morning I woke to the news Christina Grimmie had died

Someone that only set out to love, to sing and to guide

Her voice had reached me as a teen, and given me hope

That through everything I might just have the power to cope.

Let me tell you more; I’m from the millennial generation,

Born into a technologically revolutionary nation,

Where my era saw the creation of the YouTube innovation,

Where its creators were my idols, performers with a new plan

To raise up a new, diverse, all-loving and inclusive clan.

Now, one of its greatest pioneers has had her life taken,

And it hit us hard, it left the world scared and shaken.

 

As if that wasn’t enough, Sunday morning brought something new,

In the same city, in the same state, in the same country, a killer with the same view,

He believed he had the power, he believed he had the right, to kill, to judge,

He  killed 49 and injured more because he couldn’t let go of an archaic grudge.

You saw two men kissing and pulled the trigger?

Did that make you feel godly, did that make you feel bigger?

Love is love, why can’t you see that’s the truth in 2016?

And can we take a moment to look at the media,

Using every vile word in their encyclopaedia,

To blame religion, to twist the tragedy to suit their belief

That’s unforgivable, how can you unashamedly capitalise from grief?

Religion was made for faith and for hope and for support

So how can you tarnish that by misinterpreting a religion that you’ve chosen to distort,

His crime was of hatred and personal prejudice within him,

You can’t say that it was in the name of “Islam”, it was within him.

He killed, he slaughtered, because he didn’t like what he saw,

Don’t give his choice a mask and blame religion because we’ll stand for it no more

His crime was an act of homophobic rage,

So when will we progress, and turn the next page?

You cannot give a specific community some warped representation

Because it didn’t exist back in the worlds original creation.

 

But, it’s not just about love is love, it’s not just about religion and morality

Not when we look and compare the similarities between such brutality.

Guns, America still believes in guns as a perfect solution,

When it really creates nothing but a blood-shed pollution.

You say “we need them to protect ourselves” but that makes no sense,

Without the guns in the first place, there’d be no be need for such defence.

Pistols, assaults rifles, machine guns are easy to attain,

But Kinder Eggs are banned because of what they contain?

Can’t you see that’s insane?

When guns cause so much pain?

 

But why do I bother to say all this when it’s happened before?

When on countless occasions we’ve heard the words “how many more?”

Why do I bother to fight, and to oppose?

When this is how it goes:

Shooting. Discussion. Argument. Forgotten.

It’s tiring, it’s frustrating, and it’s rotten.

And when I’m in England, why do I care?

Why should any of us ‘outsiders’ care?

Because we’re all humans, and that’s something we share,

We’re given a life, and no-one should be able to take it away

And no matter what we’re told, we have a voice, this could be our day.

Change will happen, we don’t know when, and so we must always try

Until the day when our lives will be safer, and our eyes will be dry.

No-one should be saying “give up, it’s useless” or believe that that’s true

Because revolution will come, it’s come before, and it starts with you,

And me, and everyone, and a general unity that doesn’t segregate

Because of race, or sexuality, or morality, and doesn’t preach hate.

We should stand up against old fashioned views and fight for integration,

To be good role models for our children and their children; the next generation.

We have to show them that violence doesn’t combat violence,

But that we have the power to combat the silence.