There are kids running around here with guns in their hands,
gripping them so tightly that you would think that it was their guide to salvation,
like maybe if they just hold on to that clean bundle of steel and ammunition
that maybe their life will change.
But their hands are too shaky, their bones too needy for that rush of adrenaline
that so rarely encompasses them.
They hold on too tightly, too closely, and eventually, it all becomes too much
and just like that, it explodes.
The trigger is pressed, the weapon's deadly screech
piercing through the kid's silent screams and instead shooting a bullet
full of death and ruin into the chest of a fellow child,
cutting through the boy's lungs like those three words that his father never told him;
"I love you".
He was only thirteen, taken out of this world by a careless teen
who didn't know any better than to tote around a serial killer
right in the pocket of his worn down jeans.
A life in prison, murder charges without parole.
Isn't that the way this story always goes?
Two lives are taken away, one by the gun and one by the ones
who are to blame for this city's cruelty and injustice.
One kid was killed, his blood spilled onto the cold, hard ground,
while the other is sent off to rot and wither away in some jail cell
for the rest of his days.
So not only do we have a funeral to tend to, but we also have a mother
who will never get to spend another holiday ever again with her little boy,
and we get a father who is so angry at the world that he decides to grab a gun.
In fact, the same one that put his son away into a prison.
He goes out, finds a weakling who he knows won't fight back, won't resist,
won't make this harder than it already is,
and the cycle repeats.
Violence makes violence, can't you see
that if we continue to let this cycle roll on and if we continue to let
all of these trigger-happy, unhappy, self-righteous killers
wander our streets with our lives cradled helplessly in the barrels of their guns,
that we won't be getting anywhere any time soon.
We will have more people in prison, more kids buried six feet under,
and yeah, I guess it's true that when it rains, there's always thunder,
but we can't stop the sky's pounding beats until we stop the raindrops from falling
like the blood that runs deep out of yet another kid's dying body
as he lies limp in the streets.
These umbrellas that hide the rain and make you think
that the world around you isn't full of pain still don't hide the thunder.
They still don't hide the voices like my own
who stand up and rise against the murders and the homicides
and the stabbings and the shoot downs that paint these concrete streets
with the blood stains of our youth and our betrayed.
The thunder is always more powerful than the rain
and if we all join together and protest in stark indignation
against all of these unnecessary, immoral acts of rage and disgrace
then maybe, just maybe, the storms will clear.
Maybe, just maybe, we will finally get to hear
their cries and screams that have been silenced for so long
by the barrel of the gun of our rejection and doubt
that has been pressed up against their temples
and prevented them from releasing all of their pain out loud.