Yuki Jackson Credit: Photo by Joey Mendez of Camera Crew

I’ve been thinking about how to talk about gun violence through my poetry. It’s a topic very close to me since the whole premise and impetus of me starting The Battleground youth program was because of a series of teen gun shootings that I was present at back in 2017. It was in witnessing the reality of a gun culture propelled by children that awakened in me a deep sense of concern at the ease with which they can gain access to machines that are solely designed to kill. And at the end of the day, we are all children, right?

We may have surpassed a certain age that legally tells us we know better than those who can’t yet buy cigarettes and alcohol, because we say, “adult” means we have the right to obtain the brutal means to fill ourselves with poisons. It’s interesting how we don’t examine, as much, the ways in which “adult” means we can now buy harmful products and subscribe to destructive systems. And here we are, “adults,” who are actually in essence and reality, children, all born of a mother and father and who, as long as we live, will remain their child.

It’s this grave concern that has led me to write this poem, which has been incubating inside me for a few years. Initially, it was not as metaphorically inclined, more rooted in an actual daily experience I had while working at a public library and observing the children there. These children adore spicy snacks (as many of the younger generation do nowadays) and I found that fascinating. The metaphorical lens came into play when I associated their inclination towards hot chips together with their propensity for fighting, a tendency that I relate to very much. It’s a condition of those who are familiar with the condition of hell.

Hell here, I mention, isn’t a permanent place where one is assigned eternal damnation and punishment in the afterlife, but more of a state of life. Although the imagery of the cartoonish version lends well to artistic renderings and entertainment, some of which I employ in this poem like the element of fire, heat and the apocalypse. No matter our belief system, though, we cannot deny that we have, as human beings, created a multitude of conditions on Earth that could be constituted as hell. Wherever there is unchecked destruction and despair, we find this place, whether in our environment or inside of ourselves.

A burning house is what we might feel like we are living in sometimes—or a dumpster fire, according to those fun Gen Z generated memes. Good news is that this all leads to exhibiting one good parable—the parable of the burning house. In this parable or extended metaphor, Shakyamuni aka Siddhartha Gautama expounds on the incessantly ignorant perspective of humanity by likening it to a group of children playing in a burning house. Refusing to see the danger that they’re consumed in, these children continue to play inside their house as if it’s not engulfed in flames. Then, once their father arrives and tries to bring them out, they still refuse to come out, narrow-mindedly fixated on their game-playing. At the end of the parable, the father uses his wisdom to devise a series of enticing objects which have the power to finally pull the children outside to safety.

The End is a theme that many seem to be noticing is happening within our society, both for good reasons and for bad. Sometimes, the end of the world is a good thing, if that world or system is one that’s constructed on unchecked greed and oppression. And so, the mention of the ending of a world as propounded in the Book of Revelation is actually not that far off, albeit the real embodiment of this idea of apocalypse is decidedly more poetic. I also found poetic, after reading it for the first time recently, how many of the storylines and imagery contained within it match a book I’ve been working on, not knowing how closely tied these two were to each other. Mysteriously, it seems like a woman appears at the end of times, according to the text, Mary, and she is here to bring the doom down on the devil. I relate to this, as well, and since poppa got it last time, I’m here to say, Momma is here, kids.

Some Like It Hot

Yes, we are now in the apocalypse,
as evidenced by all that red stained
at the tips of my children’s fingers—

I’ve wondered why
these kids love fire so much,
it might be because
they chose to be alive now,
they came with a sense of mission,
and ready for the time—

we are not in the time
when doves are released,
instead they cry—
instead we find black birds
flying across the sky
with a spicy snack in their mouth—
look what they found—
a remnant of hot chips along with bullets—
it is these black shells too
that streak across the sky
with a sense of purpose and some heat,
propelled from the palms of children
who hold a Takis for your thoughts,
Fuego Flavor and all varieties of Flamin’ Hot—

it’s like children have to burn
in order to understand
what they refuse to learn—
that at the tips of their fingers
there are mazes drawn
like fields of maize,
a garden of ears to listen
and show how their touch
contains the light to spark a nation,
the strike of a single match
in the nation of their mind—

there is a parable that says
a parent will rush into a burning house
to save their child,
using expedient means
to draw them out to safety—
and here I put my life on the line
to pop the corn during The Battleground,
a program I created for their empowerment—
and I will say, as they grab what I’m feeding them,
that is hot sauce, not my blood