Leija-Farr-Youth-Poet-Laureate-300x451

GUN

by Leija Farr [via fusion.net]

G-U-N. Letters carved across your black ashed fingers. What started as a toy from daddy’s bottom drawer but it was not enough. One shot was not enough to satisfy your gun high, you realized your nose loved the smell of this lethal smoke fuming from bullet holes. Because you saw rappers molest imaginary pistols in songs and misuse bullets and spray homicidal rainbows on pavement.

You decided to put the most focus on this small silhouette that housed in pockets, looked beautiful to you because it is silver painted but as soon as it’s penetrated fades to an evil black.

Wanted to use guns as self-defense, you wear weak in school so you would hold it and pray with eyes tightly closed it molded into your skin. And you loved the way people ran when you hit lead into crying pigment, you didn’t listen when they told you guns were no fun.

You just repeatedly raped it and made handguns forcefully cum bullets, you blasted big caves in faces, letting dented metal secrete through the peak of the gun hole like liquid let your index inject into rifles despite seeing babies you see sprayed.

Left the taste of sour from the gunpowder you fed to innocent mouths and overtime you curved burns onto knuckles but just chuckled. This was funny to you. That you were holding something so deadly you see the police beat black and blue everyday, you see music videos portrayed with glamorized shell cases street corners turn from normal days to loud bangs, when your were little tried to cover ears with hands smeared with gun art and now it’s become you.

You’ve become the one with the fast reaction to pick up this gun and blast, never really caring how scary this weapon you were holding was. But your eardrums need to hear the sound POP,POP,POP,POP, a sensation for some reason you loved. In movies you see it’s cool so you think it’s cool to make bodies crawl and lay on them your horrific art of stroking bodies red, and in this time in your life you felt dead and like nobody so you wondered,”why can’t everybody else be.

Your fingers swallowed tears strolled down cheeks as you shot this glock, you couldn’t stop because you were drunk of this generation’s lies, you were drunk off bars emcee’s feed to you, you were drunk off TV’s meaning of a thug, took shots of the evil liquid life gives you then eyes became tipsy and would see whatever blurry visions the media gave to you.

You shot so many times that overtime your hands couldn’t feel it anymore. Numb to what runs out the gun’s mouth and is dug into innocent flesh. Your body has become one with this machine because you can’t seem to walk away.

You can’t seem to walk into places and not strike it with violent rage can’t communicate with your mouth, so you reload your only focus and hope and shoot it. You’re wondering why the gun never answers your cries? Because guns are not your friends. It doesn’t care who’s dead it’s brain is just a blank structure that shoots whatever, it just cares it’s getting fame from every person that plays with it.

That it’s shape is being bedazzled in ads and dressed to impress in lyrics. Made to fit many hands and yours slipped in and gripped it as you fired intestines with what you thought your only life was.

And I feel sorry for you, because to you that gun may seem like it’s on your side until somebody takes out and turns it on you.

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97 COMMENTS

  2. Is this poetry, or just really flowery prose? It doesn’t seem to have any sort of rhythm or structure that I can discern.

    Whichever it is, it definitely reads as being anti-gun.

    • I tried to read it, but I glazed over a third down the page. I’m sure there’s some clever wordplay in there somewhere but there’s holes in the ceiling somewhere I should be counting.

      • It is cultural diversity at its finest. But because I am so weak that I carry a gun for defense of self and others, it just made me want to buy some more rounds to ensure my culture isn’t diverted towards thuglife.

  3. Sounds like the lyrics to a drug fueled 60’s throwback song…Morrison? Joplin?…. Pink floyd?

  5. I don’t see what the big deal is, this is just a manifestation of her views and emotions. She doesn’t offer a solution, she’s just reporting how she feels. That said, I’m curious if she has any poems about the police.

  7. GUN, my version.
    I’ve got a gun dull and black, I keep it in a holster around at the small of my back. It’s never killed and I hope it never will, but you break into my house looking for cash, all your going to see is a big bright flash. Try to rob in the street, your maker is the next person you’re gonna meet. Springfield, Ruger, Mossberg and more, these bad boys gonna show you the door.

    At least mine rhymes.

    • Not bad, though the “…street…meet” line in particular could use some work on the meter.

    • A screwdriver for a screw, a hammer for a nail…
      I feel the hardware tightening, my world tightening, my life tightening
      Violence spills over boundaries, imaginary boundaries
      Frothy bubbles. Boiling potatoes with too much water in a pan
      News on the television a hiss of steam, a wordless noise, clamoring for attention
      Shrill sounds accompany flashing blue lights. Another night. Another statistic.
      The screws around me tighten. Drilling into my life. Drilling into my mind.
      Life. Who says it is precious? I don’t know any statistics.
      I know my family.
      My family is precious.
      How do I protect my family? Myself?
      Life tightens around me.
      I don’t want this. I don’t want to be an object
      Destroyer of worlds…angel of death… arbiter of justice.
      That is what they see me as. They see me as a statistic with a tool.
      But a hammer for a nail, a screwdriver for a screw, a gun for the night…
      Flashing blue lights. I will not be a statistic.
      My life tightens. I have accepted this.

      I just wrote this poem in 5 minutes. I don’t think I’m very good, but … counterpoint?

  9. Thank you.

    Way back when, I had to choose between majoring in English, or in Physics.

    It’s helpful to occasionally be reminded that I chose wisely.

  10. Honestly….. tl;dr

    For those who can tolerate poetry and did read it all the way through please tell me if I can guess at a good summation:

    Gun’s R Bad, MMMkay.

    • Having read it, I’m actually confused as to what she’s trying to say, other than a general dislike of guns. Condensing it a bit, it sounds like her point is, “guns are just inanimate tools, and it’s people who are REALLY evil…but guns are never good, so they must be bad, too.”

      …yeah, I don’t get it.

    • I can’t stand most modern poetry. This one seems to be a particularly bad example of what is loosely called poetry in today’s world. Just throw a lot of words together and massacre the English language in an attempt to make your point and try to appear smarter than everyone else. I wonder why anyone would listen to something like this or to her ? Perhaps they are pretending to be smarter than others also by acting like they understand this crap ? Reminds me of the Emperors New Clothes where everyone is afraid to say he is really naked.

      • I like modern poetry – and subject matter aside, hers is not good.

        It has no flow, no rhythm, and no creativity.

  11. Couldn’t quite finish the third paragraph. Pretty painful. Keep trying, young lady.

  12. Ugh. I hate it when people run roughshod on the English language and then try to call it poetry. When a good writer gets creative with words and wordplay, it’s fantastic. When a hack attempts it, you get “You just repeatedly raped it and made handguns forcibly cum bullets.”. Groan.

    • Thank you! This might pass for a high school poetry assignment but I think I might be a little generous even there. I will however, at least give her an E for Effort 🙂

  13. Total crap. Could not read the whole thing. A poem that does not rhyme about the same worn out subject.Her anti-gun/anti-gang view of her world. Who really cares what she thinks and does her poem really make any difference ? I don’t think so.

  14. Youth poet laureate? I never should have clicked the link. It’s so full of broken imagery hardly relating to the context. You can sort of piece together what she means and her intentions but it is so poorly written I thought for sure it was just some rando on an open mic night.

    To read “youth poet laureate”. Her other work must be exceptional and this piece simply an off target flyer or the title is pure image and zero substance.

  15. Poetry is a reflection of the culture the writer is living in. The gun is only a tool. Unfortunately in the culture she lives in this is how guns are seen. Rap music see’s violence and the use of guns differently than other forms of music. As far as the quality of her writing goes she did just fine for a kid.
    If you read poetry from any war worn part of the world you’ll read the same type of painful feelings the writer has.

    • Yeah it’s exactly what you’d expect from a kid. Warts and all. IE it’s terrible, haha.

      It’s not just her feelings that are unpleasant, though I have to wonder what she has seen of any of this firsthand in Seattle.

      • Seattle here.

        She has potentially seen plenty. South Seattle sees its share of gang bullshit. As does Sea-Tac and the surrounding area. And it’s getting worse.

        A drive-by killed a random toddler just a short time ago.

        • Also Seattle here.

          Seattle averages around 20-25 homicides per year, about one every other week or so if they were evenly distributed. They’re not, of course, but a year in Seattle is a weekend in Chicago.

          Even in the worst neighborhoods here it’s not a war zone.

  16. Too painful to read all the way through.

    I hope she isn’t paying for that “education”.

  18. Hey. Wait just a durned minute here.
    Why wasn’t she expelled for writing the word “gun” on paper.
    Where is zero tolerance when you need it?

    Man. That was some really bad writing.

  19. Maybe for an encore she can rap out a poem about how many people are killed by other tools like baseball bats, automobiles, or bathtubs.

  20. B-R-I-C-K you were a cornerstone before you war neglected. A busted knuckle crackhouse piece laying in a vacant lot. Could have used you for constructive purpose but dusty fingers rough with abuse rape chose to pick instead.

    Lifted you up in a smackdown arc. Swing down bust up. Cranium dent danses a blood summer rain on the hot asphalt like the kids playing in the fire hydrant urban season.

    ****

    If I had six more minutes, I could match it for length. Bricks and stones can be used to cause injury and should be banned.
    //TTAG Laureate

  22. Good for her for writing something. I couldn’t that melodramatic, overwrought mess, but still.

    That aside: “you wear weak in school”. Speaking of school, stay in it.

  23. Synopsis by an outsider….
    Wannabe writer:

    Pistols are bad…..
    Gun people are worse,
    This is true ’cause
    I say so in verse.

    Do not fret folks
    That this poem don’t rhyme,
    As I ain’t no poet,
    Just killing some time.

    This is what she meant…..
    Just sayin’ …….

  24. A totally different train of thought arose for me from reading the OP.

    We PotG are somewhat neglecting an important audience; the minority community(ies). Let’s think about this audience for more than a passing thought.

    What fraction of the Black community mis-use guns? 90%? . . . 50%? . . . 10%? While our attention is drawn to thugs in the inner-city who are disproportionately Black, surely we can’t imagine that the majority of Blacks participate as gun-crime-commiters. In fact, we should recognize that the majority of Blacks are the most frequent victims of crime; i.e., they ought to be the most eager listeners to our message of self-sufficiency in defense of person and property.

    Nation-wide or State-wide statistics are a hard-sell to a white soccer-mom privileged to live within a gated community with a well-funded police department. Statistics aren’t needed to remind the inner-city dweller of her vulnerability.

    What if our out-reach could penetrate the inner-city grand-parents or single-mother audience? Would they recognize a need for self-defense? Would they be receptive to gun-safety practices? Would they see a trade-off between the danger of an accidental-discharge vs that of a home-invader?

    How about their young children; “tweens”; older teenagers? Eddie Eagle is as important to young children in gun-free homes as it is for gun-keeping homes. Older teenagers might be able to recognize a long-term choice:
    – keep-out-of-trouble and preserve 2A rights of self-defense for a lifetime;
    – go-with-the-flow and lose those rights before you can even exercise them at age 21.
    At the margin, would any teenagers consider this choice worth pondering?

    Baltimore and Ferguson are likely heightening the sense of vulnerability in the inner-city. The constabulary of Detroit and Milwaukee County are publicly taking leadership positions in the exercise of 2A rights.

    What can we PotG do to outreach to this audience? What would an emergence of Black-PotG do for the support of 2A rights? Perhaps more black-skinned PotG would prove more effective than black-robed elitists.

    • I was gonna say something similar, but you said it better than I ever could. Well done.

    • “We PotG are somewhat neglecting an important audience; the minority community(ies). Let’s think about this audience for more than a passing thought.”

      It’s already happening, Mark.

      Guns are becoming much more acceptable in black culture over the past few years.

      I can’t recall where I recently read that. But I’m damn glad to hear it.

      Perhaps Libertarian attitudes are blossoming in the youth in all cultures.

    • Inner city economic situations these days are no more conducive to the ownership of a gun than they were in eighteenth-century England. If some wealthy PotG were to fund the opposite of so-called “buy backs”, so weapons of self-defense could be sold at 65% off to inner city residents, and training provided free of charge, a dent could be made, or at least we’d learn how many people in the inner city really are interested.

  25. This is actually a really good poem. It might look disjointed, but that’s because it’s supposed to be presented in the “slam poetry” format. Think Saul Williams. I think she makes a pretty valid point: that there are cowards who hide behind guns to make them feel strong or brave, or who have become so entranced by the idea of violence that they find the need and desire to commit horrible acts of violence themselves. This is less against guns then it it’s about the glorification of violence and the way some have chosen to respond to it. She’s not talking about the vast majority of gun owners. She’s calling out the broken and twisted criminals who thinks is ‘cool’ to be killers. And I would agree. It’s why I have my own guns, to defend my family and myself against evil like that. Good poem. Not anti gun. Just anti evil.

    • got this feeling as well, even tho I only read about half.

      Biggest problem I see culturally is most of the population that is anti-gun have never had a positive experience with one. Always someone getting shot or raped at gunpoint, or a kid in the house finding a unsecured gun and someone gets a negligent discharge in the head.

  27. Someone please for the love of all that is sacred, get this girl a thesaurus. I honestly dont get the anti gang feeling at all, even if she mentions rappers in the first paragraph, self defense is mentioned in the third.

    “You can’t seem to walk into places ” Sure sounds likes shes referring to CC here but who knows what the mushy morass masquerading for a proggie brain is really thinking these days.

    Loved all the gun poems above btw, keep it up yall!

  28. I made it to, “You just repeatedly raped it and made handguns forcefully cum bullets” before i realized she was just crazy.

  30. Blame the Beatniks and hippies for the death of poetry. This is pure garbage, it is not art, it is not literature. Read this trash, then go look up Wilfred Owen’s “Dulcet Et Decorum Est,” A poem about violence and (white) self destruction. Huge difference.

  31. Who knows someday she might evolve into a pretty good poet. In the meantime she might want to do some reading. A short list could be Lonna Cervantes, Allen Ginsburg, Diane di Prima, Maya Angelou and Langston Hughes.

  33. Well, everyone else is doing it, so I’ll take a stab:

    The Hebrew Psalms are filled with parallels and repetition
    Syllable count is the Japanese mission
    While westerners prefer the rhyming condition
    Across the world poetry abounds

    So you threw your thoughts together ’cause your views are valid
    In your mind you see it as a beautiful ballad
    But all that comes out is a tossed word salad
    With jumbled up, confusing sounds

    All you’ve got are metaphors and your anti-gun rhetoric
    Your thoughts are confused and jump around just a peck
    Readers are left scratching their heads saying “What the Heck?”
    Go back to your English class. Zounds!

  34. “…tell Sanchito that if he knows what’s good for him, he’d best go run and hide.
    Daddy’s got a new .45. …”

  36. Given where the bar is set these days: Obama = Nobel Peace Prize

    She’ll probably be the next Poet Laureate.

  38. Ian Anderson certainly has her beat in the poetry department.

    (Not really pro-gun, more of a pacifist sentiment.)

    Heavy Metals by Ian Anderson from Homo Erraticus

    I am the smith. I feed my melt-pot,
    fashion carbon steely blades
    while coulter and the mouldboard stab
    and break the clod in forest glades.
    In sultry peace and blood-raised anger,
    I hammer out my forging trade.

    Lockheed, Fokker, Curtis, Hawker,
    Avro, Gloster, Handley Page,
    Colt, Beretta, Walther, Mauser,
    Springfield, Ruger in a rage.
    Holland, Holland, Boss and Purdey,
    Woodward, Greener: golden age.

    Every atom ofthe arsenal forged
    in distant dying sun
    in unholy Trinity now lends new
    form to plough and gun.
    Harry S. and Oppenheimer, Fermi,
    Teller, what have you done?
    And did they pray that He may guide
    us in His ways, now battle’s won?

    • Hey that was great! I saw Jethro Tull 4 times during the 70’s(when Ian was energetic-an understatement…

    • Always a fan of Anderson’s wordsmithing but “Ruger in a rage” ? Good heavens, that’s an incongruity, a mixed metaphor, and a bad head picture, all in one.

  39. She seems to project a personal sexual fetish with regard to guns.

    “You just repeatedly raped it and made handguns forcefully cum bullets, you blasted big caves in faces, letting dented metal secrete through the peak of the gun hole like liquid … .”

    This girl needs some serious counseling. And a spell checker. That free flow rap of hers makes a *little* more sense if one reads it a second time while mentally auto-correcting for the many misspellings.

    • Most of the antis are emotionally and sexually deranged, they fixate on their own sickness while projecting it upon others…

      Anyone who associates weapons with genitalia is way, way, way too screwed up to have an opinion worth hearing.

  41. “read more” Uhh, gee, do we really need to? Nope! Now that gibberish is stuck in my head.

    “Been spendin’ most their lives, livin’ in an anti-gun paradise….
    “Been spendin’ most their lives, livin’ in a dem-ocrat paradise….

  43. The line about raping a gun and making it cum bullets is gross. Besides that, how does one rape a tool by making it perform the very action it was designed to fulfill?

    Other than that, the poem was ok. I’m not big on poetry in the first place though. I think it definitely has more of an ant-gang-banger lean (whether she realizes it or not), and that’s interesting considering that the poem is titled: GUN, and is meant to be an anti-gun poem.

    I think, what’s really telling, is how the views of anti-gunners is misplaced, and focused on the tool, and not the person behind the tool and the actions they commit. Yet, read the poem, and see that it’s actually about the person – but again, it’s titled GUN, and it’s message is supposed to be anti-gun. I wonder if, with a little introspection, she would realize that it’s the not the tool, but the person, and that subconsciously she knows that, but doesn’t accept it.

    Maybe I’m reading too much into this…

  45. Much poetry is simply a
    Way for someone to write
    Something that would be
    Complete bull in prose form
    And make it sound “genius”
    By writing it in poetry form

  46. Yeah it’s crap-but several of you pro-gun guys are pretty good! Keep it up…

  47. There once was a seattle youth

    who liked to speak the untruth

    people give guns undue affection?

    I’m afraid its just you projecting!

    Your stereotypings uncouth!.

  49. “Youth”: someone that is too young to know anything yet.
    “Poet”: someone that has no foundation in reality.
    “Youth Poet”: awww look at how many words they managed to get on the page.

    Good enough for the fridge but not good enough to actually read.

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