Fifty Shades of Death
When nights are dark you’ll never see
the depths of our humanity,
but in the light of desert days
the shades of death will quite amaze.
So if you’ve time to take the trouble
sift just once through wreck and rubble -
ashen bones of tots will rile,
though eyes of rampant killers smile.
While starving at their mama’s breast,
one wonders whom those babes transgressed.
But as the bombs boom, split and splatter,
does it even really matter?
Yes, mothers often pay the price
with holy wartime sacrifice:
in flight, miscarried embryos!
Quite slow as ethnic cleansing goes,
but nonetheless, one must confess,
infanticide’s a great success.
The Chiefs disdain the Rule of Law -
their conscience never seems to gnaw
when dealing peace its last hurrah;
though charged with crime, they never rue it,
persevere and still pursue it,
smile and claim “they made me do it”.
They smoke their own, like cannibals,
with dictates, such as Hannibal's,
erasing also hostages
in so-called rescue carnages.
With bullets flying back and forth
the hungry hordes are driven north,
since promised aid (that’s long gone south)
was empty words from furtive mouth.
Instead of plates of pita bread
the meals are served with plated lead,
and those expiring at their hands
will sleep neath sheets of silent sands.
On fallow fields where kids once played
you’ll find a random hand grenade,
the only one that didn’t explode
the last time that the lawn was mowed.
As prancing children cross the roads
sometimes a tampered phone explodes.
One wonders what the future bodes -
perhaps some elegiac odes!
Where are those boys that threw a stone?
Well, some were shot; and some were not,
but whisked away to place unknown
and in the meantime... left to rot.
Within dark tunnels, bad guys hide,
beneath the clinics, far and wide,
so missiles raze them to the ground -
no bodies of the bad guys found,
but upstairs in debris, instead,
lie doctors in the ER... dead.
Twelve bombers flattened Ah-tross City
showing no remorse or pity;
now survivors hide in tents
in fear of further ‘accidents’.
But where are those with screams that gags?
Brought often back in body bags!
No need for sorrow for the slain,
since after death they feel no pain.
Today are waged uncivil wars
which burst the dams and breach the shores
to empty vital reservoirs;
with water less than hitherto,
(and lacking coke from Timbuktu),
they’re left to lap the sewage brew.
This glance at barren battlefields
reveals the peace that killing yields,
evoking shadows time transcends
when man’s existence finally ends.
EPITAPH
While Jungle Jim the Jingoist
embroils the world, and wars persist,
pale Peter Pan the Pacifist
pleads “Can’t we somehow coexist?”
Copyright ©
Terry O'Leary
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