Penticton's Shane Koyczan responds to deadly shooting through poetry | iNFOnews | Thompson-Okanagan's News Source
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Penticton's Shane Koyczan responds to deadly shooting through poetry

Shane Koyczan is pictured taking a moment to write down his thoughts while on a walk on the west coast of Vancouver Island near Tofino.
Image Credit: Contributed/Tourism B.C.

PENTICTON — There was a heavy police presence throughout the city of Penticton yesterday as dozens of officers responded to a series of shootings that left four people dead.

A 60-year-old man is now in custody following the shooting deaths of two men and two women yesterday, April 15.

Shane Koyczan, an award winning spoken-word poet and artist originally from Penticton turned to Facebook to express his thoughts on the deadly shootings.

“The town I live in is small. Maybe 34,0000 people? It’s not tiny but because it sits between two big lakes there’s no room for it to grow any bigger,” Koyczan wrote to his page. “Today 4 people were killed by a shooter in our small town. A place where violence like that could never happen.”

The post has been shared more than 900 times as of this morning.

Everywhere

It used to be
that our nightmares
held no territory
in the waking world

the monster of homelessness
and the hellions of addiction
were problems
better left for elsewhere

violence
was a sharp
and broken stick
not long enough
to reach us here
in our tucked away corner of the globe

it used to be
that when our horrors
did somehow spill out
over the threshold of sleep

it was only
into the places
that were far away

places we could pray for
and think about
from a safe distance

places that were
"not here"

but what used to be
is no longer

and what's left
is all that is

today
here is there

the place we thought
we would never live.


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