In the wake of two mass shootings over the weekend in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, P!nk has taken to social media to remind her followers that one of the most important parts of being human is: talking and listening to each other.
The pop icon began with Instagram, and reposted a poem by Brian Bilston called “America is a Gun.” The piece finds the British poet trafficking in stereotypes in order to make a devastating point about the one that now sticks to the U.S. like a scarlet letter. “England is a cup of tea/ France, a wheel of ripened brie/ Greece, a short, squat olive tree/ America is a gun,” reads the first stanza. It ends with the lines: “Japan is a thermal spring/ Scotland is a highland fling/ Oh, better to be anything/ than America as a gun.”
P!nk’s also shared the poem via Twitter, which ended sparking some backlash from Fox News contributor Britt McHenry, who wrote, “There is nothing ‘better’ to be than an American. In our turmoil, weaknesses, struggle, unit is what we need now. I believe that @pink. America is the country that loves you and helped make you into a star. As a fan of your music, this disappoints me.”
P!nk responded; “I believe there is nothing “better” than being a human being.Each country has their beauty,+their struggles. We should all be thinking humans first. And I also believe art is meant to cause dialogue, which the posting of this poem just did. Dissent is the cornerstone of democracy”.
P!nk’s most recent album, Hurts 2B Human, has dropped this past Monday, August 5th.
Read the entire poem via P!nk’s Instagram here.
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Photo Credit: JStone / Shutterstock.com