Velvet is pouring from the necks of our men—
from the children, from the wives,
it seeps into the cracks of the concrete we stand on
and rots in the soles of our shoes.

Are we no better than animals?

Does it quench your thirst?
do you smear it on your tongue,
sink your teeth into warm, trembling flesh,
and devour? 

Do you writhe with pleasure at the screams of children,
at the way their voices splinter and shatter,
their terror dripping into your mouth,
their small agony a feast for your desire?

Are you aroused by gunshots splitting the air,
by angels ripping themselves apart in grief?

Corpses line our halls like flowers line our homes,
men slump dead over podiums,
the kids play hide-and-seek with bombs,
listening for Heaven’s choir-song
and watching the world go on…

without them.

Dreams are dashed and ground to dust
beneath little hands reaching up,
grasping for a speck of life
that will never answer.

We laugh at the mothers wailing
as they hobble, tripping over bones
in smoke-choked streets, 
but we don’t care.

Their tears are nothing but salt on our tongues.

I beg of you who stand untouched—wake,
remember: each life is a whole world,
every breath a gift from God.
Stop the hands that kill,
stop the hearts that revel in pain,
before the ocean of blood dripping from our fingertips drowns us all.

Lift your eyes! Raise your hands!
not as weapons 
but as instruments of love, 
as the only reminders 
that we still remember what it means
to be human.