WE ARE COLUMBINE: poem written 10 years ago.

We Are Columbine

I
At the first memorial service
for the students and the teacher
whose lives were obliterated by
two malign young men,
I saw two teenage girls on the podium
looking out at the huge crowd
and engaging in a school cheer-
WE ARE…..COLUMBINE!

Some might call this school spirit
unshaken in the face of tragedy.
To me, it seems more like a form
of obliviousness, almost as if the tragedy
was a brief, unexplainable tornado
instead of an incident partially caused
by the indifference and callousness
of certain students and faculty
who value conformity and achievement
more than compassion and outreach
to people who are “different”.

II
Ten young people were contacted
by the school district in Littleton.
According to district spokesperson
Rick Kaufman,
the students were presented with
“alternatives [such as home schooling]
to returning to school for the rest of the year.”
The ten students were “strongly suggested”
to take the offer.

Ten students-
some of them may be guilty
of little more than simply knowing
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
Ten students profiled as troublemakers
by a frightened school district.
Ten students likely to be shunned
by peers eager to preserve
the narrow, exclusionary cliques
found in every American high school.
Ten students who deserve empathy
and compassion from a suburb that deifies
the alleged virtues of luxury, appearance and order.
WE ARE…….COLUMBINE!

III
Columbine isn’t just a high school.
Columbine is a state of mind.

We are Columbine
when we vote against
state initiatives and bond measures
to build new schools
(or to renovate older ones)
to ease overcrowding of students.

We are Columbine
when we openly deride and mock
such proposed Federal programs as
“Midnight Basketball”-
designed to provide an alternative
to gang lifestyles for city youth.

We are Columbine
when we walk down a busy street
and flinch at the sight
of teenage boys and girls headed our way.

We are Columbine
when we see these teens
and we hate their clothes,
their baseball caps worn backwards,
their hairstyles, their jewelry
and the color of their skin.

WE ARE…….COLUMBINE!
Now
and Forever.