Elegy for TJ staggering, faltering first a fall to the knees a few gasps of breath perhaps a flash of -- too young to die -- in his barely adolescent mind slowly fading collapses face-first toward the sunbleached pavement. black lead on brown skin, blue shirt dyed with crimson like a macabre Filipino flag. he was thirteen, I think, I know it was '92 and the pinoys were all in tears but as the cameras were shut off and turned away they told me this happens, things happen in this ghetto and it's always a kid sometimes black brown or yellow gunned down all the time. seven years pass a nation weeps as the shots and bells peal at Jonesboro and at Littleton, the college-bound flock to their campuses like veterans of a children's crusade like ex-soldiers at the Battle of Columbine in the new civil war. three more years pass the nation still engulfed in its requiem wailing as if the war had never happened before '99. And back in the South Bay we know we are a part of the nation that weeps for Columbine we join in their mourning hold masses for the dead and gaze boldly at the still-focused cameras but we remember ten years ago the press did not beat their breasts on the steps of Bell Junior High the cameras showed no one in sackcloth or ashes yet still, we patiently await TJ's requiem and we know that no one ever cared until our white kids started dying. back to poetry home