In St. Louis young blacks
carry guns like cell phones
and use them often

to shoot each other,
as we read in the daily paper
and see on local television.

Black adults now put signs
in parks and yards in
neighborhoods around the city

with this message for their young:
“We must stop killing each other.”
They want to stop the suicide.

The poet Gwendolyn Brooks
once wrote that peace
won’t come to anyone until

everyone is “tea-colored.”
By 3015 the world may know
if Gwendolyn was right.

-- Donal Mahoney