Sublime: A Poem

Chris has written poetry for 28 years though he focuses on short fiction. But watch out for the occasional twisted nursery rhyme.

Author's Note

I recently wrote and published here on HubPages a short story about a shooting in a high school. The shooter was one of the students. In the story, I suggested one way students might respond to that crisis. It was extreme, but in times like these, evil must be met with something overpowering.

This poem is an alternate approach to the one I took in that story. If we did what this poem suggests, I believe it would be just as extreme as what occurred in my other story. But the solution here is a radically different extreme.

If you would like to read the other hub as well, go to, I Killed a Man Today.

Sublime

Take me away, with a song of love

Or a scene where nature’s beauty unfolds

Take me away, to a world that once was

Or to a whimsical realm of fantasies untold

Mandalay Bay, The Pulse,

Sandy Hook, Fort Hood*,

Send us looking for cover

From reports of new blood.

We listen to the stories,

Faithful to opine

We’ll remember forever

The name Columbine**.

Isil, Al-Qa’ida,

Boko Haram,

Conjur memories of death

And national alarm

Hundreds of girls

From a Nigerian school.

Know terror up close,

And inhumane rule.

Take me away, with a song of love

Or a scene where nature’s beauty unfolds

Take me away, to a world that once was

Or to a whimsical realm of fantasies untold

But rather than escaping

The world that we love,

Instead of surrendering

To minds come undone,

You pray to your God,

I’ll pray to mine

Hurting hearts to be healed

And the world made sublime.

Places Mentioned in the Poem

*Mandalay Bay Hotel, Las Vegas. The site of the deadliest shooting in U.S. history on October 1, 2017, when fifty-three people were gunned down. Shooter-Stephen Paddock.

*Pulse. A nightclub in Orlando, Florida where, on June 12, 2016, forty-nine people were killed. Shooter-Omar Mateen, twenty-nine years old.

*Sandy Hook. On December 14, 2012, twenty children between six and seven years old, as well as six school staff, were fatally shot at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Shooter-twenty year old, Adam Lanza.

*Fort Hood. At this military base in Texas, thirteen people were shot and killed on November 5, 2009. Shooter-Nidal Hasan, a U.S. Army major.

*Columbine-Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, was the site of a school shooting also involving explosive devices on April 20, 1999. Shooters-Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennet Klebold.

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© 2018 Chris Mills