I wrote this earlier this year, after the shootings in Tuscon. It's not about the shootings at all, but that's what was on my mind when I wrote it.
Clipping photos from the Daily News
To add to the layers on her bedroom wall
Of the men who whisper secrets
In words she doesn’t know
She plays the TV real loud all day long
Tuned to static noise
That lives between the dials
Trying to keep herself together
And cool her beating heart
She reads her books with eyes shut tight
Picturing the words written just for her
Nothing makes sense when she is quiet
So she bangs on the world
She bangs on the world
She hates it when her mother’s crying
Because she doesn’t like the water in her hair
She won’t go see another doctor
She doesn’t want to share
She screams as loudly as she can
Relishing the fire dissonance ignites
Nothing makes sense when she is quiet
So she bangs on the world
She bangs on the world
She’d like to see the outside world again
But pills just make her slow
Turn her ambitions off
So she drifts into the volume
Where she can hear her thoughts
She keeps her old picture in a book
Underneath the floor tucked behind the bed
Back from the days when she still smiled
Now she bangs on the world
She bangs on the world