Sandy Hook by Charlotte Picker (16, Australia)

**Content Warning: Gun Violence

​He stole the lives that were not his
He kept them there to hold
A searing scowl and greedy eyes
They sought a grief, uncontrolled

​It was never shown on the news
But I see it in my mind
The evil soul of a murderer
In hell it is confined

---

In the hallowed halls of a school ground
He stole a mother’s love
That playground’s filled with others now
And coffins, rubber gloves

And all the marching in the world
Won’t get those children back
In those classrooms in the school
The most villainous attack

And all those guns on the streets

With a trigger, he did steal
Those children’s lives, a parent’s love
Your prayers won’t let this heal

I stand here in my youth
Reading the list of names
Wondering how he did it
How he loaded and took aim

Now all the stories run
Society’s guilt be free
Video games, mental strains
It’s all the same to me

He never should have held
A gun between his hands
A weapon of mass destruction
No more than background scans...

Because his soul was filled with lust
As he shot them in the eye
Did your greedy heart feel powerful?
When you heard those children cry?

Yes, it’s him I want to talk about
The seven sins that he possessed
Because this murderer of innocence
Never stood there and confessed

A murder and a thief he was,
A coward’s name nay speak
A sinner known through history
Now a symbol of the weak

But I’m a sinner too
If we look at it that way
The wrath, it fills my body
It pulses through my day

But my anger is a blessing
With it fight for what he took
Because they didn’t deserve to die
The children of Sandy Hook