DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE Poem: Just Another Day, by Heather Pease

Settle down everyone
Welcome to your first day of class
I’ll be your teacher
Here in America, a new school year means
Open Hunting Season
Let’s all stand for the pledge

“I pledge allegiance to the glock
of the United States of Gun-Loving Americans
and to their right to bear arms
for which they stand,
one Nation under gunfire,
divided,
Sweet land of misery
and no justice
for all.”

My Country Tis of Thee
Land of You Only Live Once
Just thoughts and prayers here
Security is a false God

Want to go out on the town?

Conduct your next search by bullet holes
in the grocery store, nail salon – nightclub,
movie theater, mall, mosque,
a church or the synagogue

Take your kids to school,
where they will learn how to hide
from a shooter.

Because
We. Do. Not. Learn.
And statistics
don’t stick.

Scoundrels line legislative pockets
paying for mansions
While teachers drop packed lunches
in the lounge
only to cower in classrooms
covering kids
with bodies not built to be bulletproof.

Playgrounds are littered with lies
of reforms that disappear with a poll.
Feckless Politicians paid with firepower
But I’m the selfish cunt?
Wanting to ban guns instead of books

live where kids grow,
get a free education
instead of an AR15 in their face.

The mass murder of children is just so
American

It’s just another day
of shootings.

Fill out your donor card
cuz a corpse has rights!
Guns are worth more than a pussy
in the Land of the Free.
School Houses are easily turned into mass graves.
Barricades become booby traps,
exits equal entrances
escape impossible.

When will a life
be one too many? A bullet
be the last?
When will a vote matter more
than an agenda
OR an agenda
become action and words be more
than prayers?

Fuck your prayers
they have never
brought back the dead.