"Ring around the rosies
A pocket full of posies
Ashes, Ashes
We all fall DOWN."
Posies can't cover up the smell of our dead anymore
The stench is now stuck in the air like poison
We breath in the ashes of our homes instead of air
Destruction is our new entertainment
Broken TV screens holding our last shards of hope.
Flags telling our stories in colors:
Red from the blood they shed
Green from the land they stole
White from the life we led
Black from the gaping hole
That lies inside our homes.
Eyelids lift slowly
Like sheets unfolding on the horizons
The first thing we feel are battlescars
Knives plunged into our skins from the 'other side'.
Not our enemies,
But our silent onlookers.
Their eyes are oceans
Unknowing of their own depths
Leaving 95% of their 'seas' untouched
A metaphor for ignorance
A blindness of the mind.
A veil over the heart.
Let me paint you a picture.
Whispers echo in an abandoned bomb crater
Hands gently caressing lost faces
A kitten licking its paws, ridding them of blackened ash
A scorched soccer ball rolling down a hill of yellowing grass.
Butterflies racing in nervous stomachs
Gas polluting the air in puffs of cotton candy
A broken radio still playing static
Dumpsters filled with what used to be civilizations.
A balance of beautiful horror and truth.
Yes. TRUTH.
These pictures that I've painted so carefully are a reality.
"But who's reality exactly?" is what you're gonna ask me.
Well, your reality
If you keep ignoring what's been happening.
While we all sit in these chairs
Someone else is losing everything.
How can we sleep at night?
When we've lost so many lives
Hypnotized by the lies they've televised.
Stop.
Listen to the silence.
A blessing that we've all taken for granted
For some, even the ticking of a clock
Sounds like gunshots.
This whole poem that started with a nursery rhyme.
Has escaped all the apartheid walls of
Space and time.
A simple journey through the
Random thoughts of a Justice Seeker.
My mind.
