The 2018 calendar pages
Half turned over
Sidewalks pool
Sticky drying puddles
Of victims’ blood
And ejected shell casings.
Newspaper headlines scream
Extra large bold font
Summer of the gun: redux
Article follows below
On front page splash story.
Large photo
Area roped off
By yellow crime tape
Dominates front page.
Police frustrated
Hands tied
Walls of silence
From witnesses found.
By-product
Long complex history tainted
By racial profiling and mistrust.
Nearby police chief laments
Provincial guideline
Curtailing carding usage
To control gun violence
As victims grow
In local hospitals and morgues.
Never mind
Carding is racially profiling
Visible minorities
Slightest infraction ticketed
Under heighten attention.
Bloody Canada Day
Long weekend
11 more bodies
On victims list.
Thankfully
Some avoided
All expense prepaid trip
To local morgue.
Death toll
Now 25 people
With a spent bullet.
Aggressively
Mayor boasts
Last year's hiring
200 new police officers.
Promising
To remove these thugs
From the community.
Quick short term solution
Mayor’s tough on crime creds
Photo-op.
Avoiding political crisis
Of Canada's economic divide
Unsalvageable communities
By ruling elite
On racial grounds.
Requiring strong political will
All levels of government
Spending long term money
Immediate rewards-years away.
Beyond grateful community
Someone heard
Its desperate pleads.
Constructing accessible institutions
With outreach programs
Deny to these children
Removing language
And cultural barriers.
Building respect and identity
Silencing the siren call
Of local gangs.
Countering
A city awashed
Sea of illegal guns
Local and other sources.
Idolizing Gangsta rappers
Where one's manhood
Measured by a gun.
Bullets replace words
In disagreements
Once settled
By fists and knives.
Living
In a system
Long discriminatory
Hollow promises made
Rarely fulfill.
Only noticed
When violence spoils
Into affluent areas.
Therisa © 2018
Author’s note: Written for this week’s Poets United midweek motif word prompt: city.
Over the Canada Day long weekend, Toronto witnessed one of its worse weekends for gun violence that spinned overall the city. Sadly, the gun violence has crossed regional borders into Peel and York counties. While the politicians and local police forces talk tough, there is no quick and easy solution to epidemic that infecting Canadian municipalities. Other than long term capital investments into the communities that’s generating this ongoing horror. Sorry politicians, no photo-ops for you, on this one.
I know the numbers have changed, since I have written this, but I have decided to go with the numbers that I had, when I finished this poem.
