TV News (Australia)

 

Thousands march 

in our major cities.

(I too, if younger, fitter.)

No mere rumpus,

although impassioned.

Determination!

One placard arrests me:

WAR CRIMES ARE NOT

SELF-DEFENCE. 

Next, an overseas bulletin. 

I recoil, shriek,

cover my eyes. 

Children’s bones 

poke like sticks

through empty skin.

Written for dVerse, for Quadrille #230: Let's kick up a rumpus! (44 words excluding title, which must include the  word 'rumpus'.)

Comments are disabled for this post. (I appreciate that the topic is very hard for any of us to engage with, and I don't wish to start a quarrel here – but sometimes a poet must speak up, as a matter of  honour. You are of course free to use your own poems, on your own blogs, to express yourself on this subject if you feel an urgency to address it.)

Ripping the Blindfold Off

 

I finally realise

(I can be very slow) –

of course they are killing the children!

It’s a genocide (we all know that) 

so of course they are ending

the next generation

before it starts. 

Before it gets a grip.

They are bombing the hospitals,

destroying maternity wards –

the new babies, the mothers 

about to give birth.

I thought they were – blindly – creating

a new generation of terrorists (war

begets war). But no,

not so blind after all. 

They are busy eradicating

the whole future 

of a whole people.

Contemplating this,

seeing more clearly

than I ever allowed myself:

I too have lost my breath.

Words have not been enough.

Decades of words, 

a century of words

failed to save the earth 

from effects of human greed.

How can I hope that words

might prevent the slaughter of children?
But words are all I have …

I contemplate changing 'they' to 'we'. Have we not been complicit?

Note:

In 1896, a seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first predicted that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect.