Gu Violence Blues
GUN VIOLENCE BLUES
They built a gun-violence memorial
in a god-forsaken corner of my
struggling city
A collaborative effort of a few academics,
a handful of neighbors, a preacher or two,
and some interested parties with a mission
and a grant, a willing grad student, not much
more than that
It was a soul-searching journey and a
harrowing process – forms and permissions,
research procedures, long-delayed evening meetings,
the scouting for a site among derelict properties, a
preliminary design, an eventual installation, a degree
soon conferred, the grieving still sad, the shooters
still bad, the community had!
And shortly thereafter, back to the suburbs, back to
the exurbs, back to academia, armed with self-serving
stories about heroic interventions and making a difference,
their skills and tax dollars, their lofty educations, their
political connections and faith in the future denied to the
community where they would matter the most, and the
beleaguered population which, in lieu of resources only the
fortunate can bring, got a memorial project and a feel
good event before more shots were fired there
later that spring!
Several months later at a gut-wrenching funeral for yet
another lost soul, the exasperated preacher whose cadences
were linked to the moaning and swaying of a tabernacle
choir, sought answers from The Lord, who had nothing to say!
But the following summer a gritty, sweating singer, who
somehow knew Syracuse much better than The Lord,
used the trance-like rhythm of a walking bass blues
with a mournfully melodic lead guitar line to drop a
verifiable truth on the crowd at Clinton Square:
“Don’t be asking where He is, now!
We’re on our, y’all!
We are out here, out here, out here
ON OUR OWN!”
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