I would love to say we’ve got a great show for you tonight,
but I’m not sure that’s the case.
Old friends, no one wants to do this listening.
All too often we are here.
Stunned by a crazy that is rarer than we think,
how incredible, the packing of the deceased,
the pain of disturbing nature with a moment of graphic speak,
of toxic and absurdity.
Here we are again, violent.
Vitriol and opportunity on television,
in the way we talk to each other.
Exonerate from blame a reality that we cannot approach verbally.
Our capacity to be horrified by being truly sad.
The shattered lunacy of real dignity,
the sense of such situations.
Senselessness in being cut way too short.
Read up on being numb,
the dispiriting implications,
troubled enemies with families of pain.
Match the forever-paranoid with great rhetorics
of light and thank you.
Never worse than when the actions of madmen take forever.
Don’t you know the leading of thought
away from the tragedy of shame?
How much living and catharsis in predictable crazy.
Something incredibly stupid and silly
that we had previously lost.
Manifestos of anonymous goodness.
More often than not, people creating solace
for tomorrows they’ve never even met.
Wouldn’t it be nice to cause this hyperbole of feeling,
however fleeting?
Taken from the Jon Stewart show after the Tucson shootings, on the 20th January 2011. Submitted by Haley Patail.
Verbatim Poetry 