since 1999 Columbine
about a hundred 87,000 students were resigned
to an undesired anxiety
a living hell
where minutes trickle and drag
bullets rip through the fickle fabric of time ending the lives of 122 in a place they never conceived they could die
Imagine, their second hands stopped on the clock
second hand shock as time stills to remind us
that silence and blindness can kill as many as an assault rifle.

this culture of violence is rooted in silence
and those who find asylum in the quiet have grown deaf to the cries
of those who should have been saved
Instead 122 scholars who won’t ever teach or graduate
watch our idleness from their grave
And we, the students, take it day by day
navigating each moment in hopes it won’t be our last
we take it day by day
trying not to take each one for granted but hey
sometimes,
it sure feels like they are
Meanwhile the grey-haired politicians sit safe behind their brazen opinions
call us out for calling them out calling out that we are entitled, emotional
and too naive to seize the bleak future we fear to call our own
So we call for change

Call us what you may
A one way street, a people of conformity, individuality obsolete
But we call ourselves the change
The full circle revolution of a revolution reincarnated
Another coming of age bathed in rage
Neglecting the broken crackly speech of puberty we know like it was yesterday
Our young voice
reasonable and impatient
reverberates

to those who think our generation is generated by voluntary sedation
that we are enslaved by the technological creations of those before us
porous and shallow and never satiated by the instant gratification of
a double tap
the crass manifestation of virtual insecurity
I ask you to take a step back
And ask who were the ones who placed the smartphones in these infants’ hands?
Who branded us the iGeneration?
Who still calls us millennials even though
Millennials only got the the smartphones first?
While their successors have been well-versed with the digital since birth

In third grade I was told the pen was mightier than the sword
yet i get a creeping feeling that even ink would retreat from an AR-15

But the pen’s undergone evolution too
to bring about a generation saturated in methods of mass communication
armed for a bulletless battle
child soldiers lined shoulder to shoulder
angry. alive.
Hearts beating
seething at the pride of the good chunk of adults who still believe the bereaved brought their deaths upon themselves
still believe that all gen z can do is grieve but can’t conceive the grave implications of a bullet.

We ask you to think again
We feel the gravity and plead it doesnt pull us six feet deep
We feel the gravity
We are the inertia innervating our own kinetic energy
Persisting until the pulses in our chests aren’t impossible to protect
We resist, until we can be sure that we aren’t next.