Orlando-- A Tragedy | Teen Ink

Orlando-- A Tragedy

June 13, 2016
By EternallyCreative SILVER, Union City, New Jersey
EternallyCreative SILVER, Union City, New Jersey
6 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Favorite Quote:
"Truth is beauty, and beauty truth" -John Keats (Ode to a Grecian Urn)


One hundred lives, one hundred souls,

Were enjoying a night of gladness and mirth.
In the stifling darkness, they were as blind as moles.
Even as Terror and Chaos gave life and birth,
To Madness, the child with six gaping holes.

The first two holes could be found in his eyes,
For he had none to see the rainbow in the night,
Emanating from the club, neither left or right,
But arching over Paradise through the obsidian skies
--A Paradise at Monotony’s Edge, powered by flight.

The next two holes were in his heart and mind,
For the spirit failed to think or feel for the future dead,
He had no compassion felt, nor thought that could be read,
Only voids of hatred and rage that crept from behind,
And twisted his essence-- forcefully married, forcefully wed.

The last two holes were his once human ears,
Now gone, replaced by scars that made him deaf,
Deaf to the screams of innocents choking for breath,
Deaf to the sounds of his own gunshots and fears--
But pointy-eared to the war-voices of gods like Seth.

In the abyss of himself, those fancies told the Mad One,
To destroy the pot from which the rainbow was sprouted--
The pot from which gayish wealth shone like the Sun,
To drive out the color and write in the scrolls for fun,
A warning to all with the blood of a future clouded.

--After the scourge, the massacre, the perverted game,
The elf-orc had destroyed the souls fifty-fifty, cut them by half,
One-half of him walked with his head down in shame,
While the other held his head high, expecting his fame,
But either way, praise would still go the golden calf--

Stained with blood, when it wanted none.


The author's comments:

This poem was written out of my need to empathize with those who lost friends and family in the Orlando, Florida massacre that killed 50 people and injured more than 50 others. What Omar Siddiqui Mateen did was despicable-- he is Madness in my poem as a result of his senseless crime, and his backward notions of murder to justify his religious sect. No one should have to die for expressing themselves or being different than what is considered the norm-- especially when this difference falls under the category of sexual orientation. What Mateen did on April 12 at 2am in the middle of nightclub, meant to be a place where homosexuals could feel accepted and loved just goes to show how ignorant and ironically monstrous we have become as a species despite our advances in technology and science. Maybe it is time for us as a race to start thinking about how we can advance our ethics and humanity forward so we can have less atrocities and more pleasantries. Our world cannot survive if the delicate balance between science and technology, and the humanities is disrupted. Otherwise, are we really human if this is the case? You decide. 


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