"Choosing" to be Scorned

Fri, 11/25/2016 - 18:59 -- LBLRRH

Odd as it seems, I don’t remember where I was.

I just remember my sister wanting to cuss

And wanting to say in my eye there was dust.

I didn’t want

To understand what it all meant,

But I became bent

On research and buzz and scream.

Forty-nine dead

And I got to go to bed

While families of every kind

Sat in their dread and cried.

 

In all honesty this shouldn’t matter just because

The people were all gay,

But because people are people

And because the shooter was just as gay

As the rest of them.

It is a story of normal jealousy

Turned into murdering

And hand bloody-ing.

And it hurts so bad

To hear people blame the “fags”

For being who they are,

For having the audacity to blame them

For being born,

For not lining up with the norm,

For “choosing” to be scorned,

When all it was

Was a hate crime story about a boy

Who had his heart broken.

 

It’s not that “the gays” aren’t safe.

It’s that some of them are also crazy.

It was bound to happen eventually.

And we need to know that, just maybe,

Fewer people would care, positive or negatively,

If they were just straight babies,

If they weren’t nineteen and slightly older,

If they weren’t always given the religious cold shoulder.

The crime would have to be even bolder

To get the attention of media showers.

 

Orlando breaks my heart at every passing mention,

And I have my hand out in extension

For the ones who feel lonesome

And hated

And degraded

And were made to have their well-beings deflated.

But my heart breaks not only for the ones with

Sexualities like mine,

That are trans, gay or bi,

But for the people who have died

Far before the right time.

I continue crying

Not because it “could’ve been me,”

But because there was killing

And I wish I could’ve stopped it

Had I not been hundreds of miles away.

 

Do not simplify the lost to the

Identities they were wearing.

Remember they are human beings

With families

And now too empty housing

Now that someone’s disappeared.

Never forget what happened,

But remember the lost for more

Than their identities.

That’s what ruins me.

I hate that people died,

And I hate, almost as much,

That the people won’t remember

These people were parents, mommies

And daddies,

Employees

Someone else’s “sweetie,”

That they had beating hearts,

Were so smart,

Had the courage to start

Living their lives in a place

Where they weren’t always safe.

 

Odd as it seems, I don’t remember where I was.

I just remember my sister wanting to cuss

And wanting to say in my eye there was dust.

While everyone slept

And my mouth felt like cotton,

I couldn’t speak

Because people were lost

And their personhoods’, forgotten.

This poem is about: 
My country
Our world

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