On Tisha b’Av, the Jewish Day of Mourning, it’s traditional to read the book of Lamentations. Each chapter is an acrostic, the verses following the letters of the Hebrew alef bet. This week, in response to the latest mass shootings, I felt compelled to write a new chapter, based upon the first chapter of the original. This is an English acrostic, with the last few letters coupled to match the number of Hebrew verses. It’s a cry of mourning and a call for action. May we soon reach a time when tragedies like those in El Paso and Dayton no longer afflict our nation.

 

Lamentation for Gun Violence

  1. Alas. Broken sits this country once rich with promise. America, created by war against tyrants, has become a battleground for innocents. Lady Liberty has become a hostage of the NRA.
  2. Bitterly she weeps in the night, her cheeks wet with tears. There is none to comfort her. Too many loved ones and neighbors are dead. Those whose ancestors dreamed of her have become her foes.
  3. Columbine birthed America into a new normal of misery where there is no rest. The gun lobby overtook each chance for redemption.
  4. Dayton is in mourning, empty of partygoers. Its clubs are deserted. Its bartenders cry, its dancers cradle their heads– utterly disconsolate.
  5. El Paso has fallen to White Supremacy, whose supporters are at ease, for the NRA will say that this is the price to pay for liberty.
  6. Flaunted at every turn is the hope of peace. Those who spout sensibility have no platform. They bleat feebly to ears shut off to reason.
  7. Gilroy was full of the precious potential of children and their parents, now afflicted by woe and sorrow. Where brown people fell by enemies’ hands, supremacists looked on and gloated.
  8. How America has greatly sinned, thereby becoming a mockery of her own ideals. All who admired her fear her, for they have seen her overtaken, and she can only sigh and shrink and weep.
  9. In sorrow there is no thought for her future. She has sunk appallingly with none to comfort her. “See my misery!” she cries. “How my enemies jeer as innocents die!”
  10. Just look as the gun slingers slide their sooty hands along all that is sacred, America’s welcoming sanctuaries in Charleston and Pittsburgh invaded by nationalists.
  11. Kileen should have woken America up nearly 30 years ago, but her inhabitants bartered their treasured lives for high capacity magazines, and she could only cry “See, and behold, how abject I have become.”
  12. “Las Vegas felled 59 crossing my road. Look and see– is there any agony like the loss of so many so swiftly dealt to me by toxic masculinity?”
  13. “Many marched against the massacres but congress hurled me backwards, leaving me forlorn, in constant misery.”
  14. “Newtown was a moment of reckoning left untapped. My strength is sapped through inaction. I have been delivered into the hands of those I cannot withstand.”
  15. “Orlando once held the repulsive record at 50 lives lost– a young future crushed in mid-dance, trodden upon and trampled into nothingness. Heroism is rejected.”
  16. “Parkland pulled tears from my eyes. Far from me is any comforter who might revive my spirit. My children are forlorn, for the foe has prevailed.”
  17. Quaking, Lady Liberty spreads her hands and her torch falls. She has no one to comfort her. There are enemies all about. America has become a thing unclean.
  18. “Righteousness is lost to assault rifles. Hear, all you peoples, and behold my agony! My children’s lives have been held for ransom by the Republican Party.”
  19. “San Bernadino and Sutherland Springs cried out and were played false. Pastors and employees have perished in the land as they searched for shelter to keep themselves breathing. Tuscon turned to blood at a campaign stop.”
  20. “Unless there is a change, my heart will remain in anguish. Virginia Tech will be forgotten in the face of more virulent destruction. Outside, the gun deals death. Indoors, the gun deals death.”
  21. “When the people witnessed my sighs, no one offered me comfort. My foes heard and exalted and upped their donations to their pro-gun congresspeople. This is our doing and our undoing! Xenophobic impulses have brought on this era of bullet-based bridling.”
  22. “Yes, let there be a reckoning in our days. Deal with my foes with more mercy than you have my innocents. Zap them of their semi-automatic supremacist slaughter. For my sighs are many, and my heart is sick.”