And Do Nothing More
When they killed John F. Kennedy
They gave us their thoughts and prayers,
And did nothing more.
When they killed Martin, and Bobby,
they gave us their thoughts and prayers,
And did nothing more.
When they killed John Lennon and Marvin Gaye, they gave us their thoughts and prayers,
And did nothing more.
Every decade since, from South Syracuse to East LA, when they killed sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, robbing us of their future,
They gave us their thoughts and prayers,
And did nothing more.
When they “went postal,“ formed militias,
Started killing students far before Columbine, they gave us their thoughts and prayers,
And did nothing more.
So when we raised our righteous anger
after the deaths of our little ones in Sandy Hook,
they finally panicked, gathered in dark corners.
Plotted and strategized to calm us down,
pay their politicians
to keep selling their product,
And told us: “Now is not the time!“
And all of it so they can
give us their “thoughts and prayers,”
while they export their murder,
pocket their money,
And do nothing more.
How many Las Vegas’s? How many night clubs? How many vacations, students, and just plain grandchildren will it take to finally make
These foolish old men understand,
That “thoughts and prayers,” are not enough.
As fathers and mothers,
brothers and sisters
aunts and uncles
friends and neighbors
gather at countless graves for children too young
to die,
too loved to forget,
we cannot as a nation sit by
And do nothing more!