Tag: shooting

  • What Does It Take?

    What Does It Take?

    [Guest poem] What does it take to change a life from within? Young and fearless those 3 words, inscribed on your chest Invincible you were til one day, gun shots fired your body running suddenly ablaze the sirens wailed your family prayed your homies await your enemies irate everything hurt a miracle, you survived and…

  • I have never met Shyheim Buford

    I have never met Shyheim Buford, a seventeen year old young man who, by all accounts from my roommate, was a kind and lively teenager, the sort who was and would have been a role model for the younger ones in our neighborhoods here in Wilmington, Delaware. He was even a street leader once in…

  • Shootings and Samaritans

    Shootings and Samaritans

    [Originally written for the ESN blog.  Mainly recycled material.] I found out about the Newtown shooting while working in a pediatric clinic. In between seeing children with sore throats and rashes and sniffles, I would hover over the computer and read more about other children torn apart by gunfire. I found out about the Boston…

  • Guns, Children, and Suits: that which does not belong

    Guns, Children, and Suits: that which does not belong

    I would rather talk about guns and children than wear a suit. I do not like suits. Whenever I have to dress in anything fancier than casual, I become nervous because I know I am dressing for someone else’s eye. It sounds childish because it is, as an emotionally traumatic holdover from my super-awkward middle…

  • Never Normal

    Never Normal

    I got up before the alarm yesterday even though my sleep was fitful and restless.  Though it was hard for me to know for sure, I was fairly certain that a series of gunshots had woken me up in the middle of the night, and that what had followed was a series of nightmares about…

  • Part 1: On Cynicism

    I originally wrote the following passage for a Good Friday reflection in 2007, unknowingly done one week before the Virginia Tech shooting.  The intent in re-posting here is not to lessen the tragedy of what has just occurred in Connecticut, but to speak truth about how little has changed five years later.  Kyrie eleison. The…