A Poem By Kimberly Wilder
Ed: Kimberly wrote this in 1998. It is sad and frightening that it is still relevant today
A historical poem.
Written in 1998, in response to a school shooting
in Jonesboro, Arkansas
Jonesboro Public School Massacre
(1998)
Four children and a teacher died.
Let us learn.
Let us force ourselves,
allow ourselves,
to measure, scrutinize, judge
the forces that influenced two young boys
to murder their peers.
Let us consider:
A school system called compulsory
pulling in younger and younger citizens of a free society.
An educational system dumping human beings
as delicate and sacred as our children into the public domain,
with adversarial unions, calculating insurance companies, looming lawsuits,
the right to bear arms.
A concept of professionalism
luring us in with status and money,
rewarding teachers and specialists
by crowning them pawns of the marketplace,
rewarding our children by creating new classes of adults
scurrying about them, not caring.
Let us weigh:
An acceptance of divorce
leaving troubled young boys unsupported in distant cities.
A system of divorce which makes it
embarrassing to celebrate Father’s Day in our classrooms.
Let us examine:
A culture of guns, more pervasive than philosophy:
Rainbow colored action figures aiming at children in toy stores;
sociopathic gun lobbies;
leftover Klan hate;
television violence babysitting latchkey kids.
A culture more comfortable defending violence
than discussing its implications with their own children.
We do not need to show mercy to
government, the media, gun factories, institutions, or laws.
They are not human,
They should be evaluated, censured, vilified–
destroyed if necessary, when they cause pain and death.
We only have to forgive two young boys
ensnared in our web of catastrophe.
And as for the adults involved–
parents, teachers, judges, lobbyists,
(ourselves)--
we can learn from them, preach to them, argue with them,
blame them,
before we give them their due:
Forgiveness, yes.
But, judgment, too.
by Kimberly Wilder
