from Paris with love

I rage because children live fearful
for their lives, because our answer
is always more bombs, because we think
that dead children are collateral damage
and that their parents deserve the despair
of losing a son or daughter so precious.

I storm because my peers forget
that people are real and they bleed
and they feel, and they cry, and they
lose their will to live when babies
are torn apart by a force they can't control
sent by the government of a country
that hates them, and they don't understand
why hatred exists, what they have done
in their ordinary lives to deserve it.

I cry because it could so easily
be my little boy raising his arms to a camera
because he believes it is a gun
because it could so easily
be my little boy having his world
destroyed by people he's never met
because it could so easily
be my little boy laying dead in the dust
of wartorn country full of fear.