Words & Music by Mike Power

The least interesting man in the world:

I don’t always write poetry, but when I do I am usually inspired by impressions and feelings, rather than incidents. I let my mind go soft in the face of overwhelming forces like love or nature, then search for words to capture the resultant swirling phantoms.

There is only one time that I wrote a poem inspired by a specific event. On June 12, 2016 a man opened fire in the Orlando nightclub Pulse. When the shooting and screaming stopped, 49 people were dead and 53 more were wounded. Beyond those victims, many times more people were sickened and scarred by the All-American phenomenon of gun violence and the cowardice of government officials at every level who allow it to fester.

I wrote this poem in reaction:

It doesn’t matter anymore
Why it was done, or how
Bright red splatter is everywhere
Mixed with chunks of flesh and booze
Eventually it goes down the drain
And gets washed out to sea

It doesn’t matter anymore
The deed cannot be undone
The memory cannot be forgotten
There’s only so much that tears can wash away

Angry voices yell and tell
Who to blame and who to punish
Terrorists
Gun nuts
Liberals
NRA
LGBTQIA
Muslims
Congress
Obama
Killary
Drumpf
It doesn’t matter anymore

We like to pretend that we want it to stop
We like to tweet #neveragain
We like to send our thoughts and prayers
We like to hold candlelight vigils
We like to weep together
But we don’t want it to stop
We don’t want it to stop
We don’t want it to stop
We don’t want it to stop
It doesn’t matter anymore