We love our school and learn a lot

after passing through the metal detector.

Most important, we're taught how to conceal ourselves.

No sport for us, but shooter drills instead.

Turn out the lights and lock the classroom door,

squat quivering, eminently visible, under our flimsy desks

as someone could crash in with murderous intent

having already killed the guards on the school entrance

with his latest purchase at the supermarket gun counter.

 

At five or six years old they teach us kindly

that our class might be exterminated any day,

and that the NRA Trumped up solution to this inconvenience

is for us too, at eighteen,  to equip ourselves

with the necessary to wipe out fellow citizens,

or for our hassled teachers too to tote!

Twisted thinking.