fragmented
a jumble of mass—fire, rubble, smoke, screams.
glittering letters woven with trails of blood—
last words and tears are anthologized
in scholarly editions of middle-eastern archives
that recite ancient lore, forgotten rhymes.
they adorn my pristine wooden shelves,
appear on screens untouched by missiles.
peer-reviewed articles carry the weight of stories
once known and lived—now Ctrl + Shift + Del,
or reduced to numbered lists of pixelated grief.
a path of olive trees filled with booming laughter
now whispers beneath a barrage of bombs.
the ink hisses as it scorches my page
with the dying embers of our collective rage.
flickering gifts of orange
merrily fall from the sky-blue sleigh
as, last december,
santa crawled down the broken chimney
and laid down the child’s present—
a precious doll with red-rimmed eyes
that stared at another pair
also devoid of any life.
her hands wave back at me
from under the olive canopy—
“live… and save my story from
the oppressive shadow of time.”
i reach out but she disintegrates,
evaporating like our lost humanity.
a white curtain of thick and sickly smoke
flutters incessantly over all our eyes.
we are the crowds but we fear the chants.
we rehash stories, we update the memory.
incessantly, we share, we cry, we resist.
like ripples we crash and burn and break
across a bald veneer of horrifying silence
as corpses float from the river to the sea.
their echoes crawl back from the void.
her figure in the distance—that girl
in death is now a rightful citizen
of the karmic lands we supposedly
fight to control and reign over in life.
pure blue, the ironic colour of her sky.
clouds hang indolent—evanescent—
pregnant with her unlived dreams.
my home built of thoughts and ideals—
a brown castle of righteousness wobbles—
its foundations cracked with rage.
in their chasmic depths, when i listen closely,
i hear the dying strains of our rallying cry
float away like the ashes of a motherless child.
