I don’t have an answer for the question, How Many More?, and I wish I did. What I do know is that we need more music, art, conversation, love, compassion, caring, random acts of compassion. We need to take care our ourselves and our own issues remembering there is not one of us that is perfect. We need to heal our own blemishes first before even beginning to think about someone else’s problems.

 

Kindness should come before boasting, healing hands before violent ones, medicines to cure diseases should come before guns. Food for every person should come before Christian Dior bags (and I love them). Housing should come before a luxury car. Trees to improve the air we breathe should come before chemicals in our food. Clean water should come before stock dividends. Helping someone should come before what color their skin is, what their sexual preference is, or what spiritual path they follow.

 

Peace should come before war, being a part of the family of man should be more important than how different someone seems to be. Action is more important than talking about mass shootings and doing kindnesses is more important than thinking these events should never have happened. Perhaps most important, those who have been taught not to think for themselves and not to speak must learn to speak once again or for the first time.

 

 

Unlearning not to speak

 

Blizzards of paper

in slow motion

sift through her

In nightmares she suddenly recalls

a class she signed up for

but forgot to attend.

Now it is too late.

Now it is time for finals:

losers will be shot.

Phrases of men who lectured her

drift and rustle in piles:

Why don’t you speak up?

Why are you shouting”

You have the wrong answer,

wrong line, wrong face.

They tell her she is womb-man,

babymachine, mirror, and penis-poor,

a dish of synthetic strawberry ice cream

rapidly melting.

She grunts to a halt.

She must learn to speak

starting with I

Starting with we

starting as the infant does

with her own true hunger

and pleasure

and rage.

—Marge Piercy, feminist poet and novelist