Uncivil War Stories

A poem

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Every war is uncivil.
And the truth remains inconvenient
when it jars with preferred narratives and virtue signalling.
There is more than one uncivil war going on outside.
One more time:
There is more than one uncivil war going on outside.
Nobody will win.
Everybody just becomes more dehumanised.
Unlucky for us the apocalypse will be televised.
Will we all fall down watching all the people die.
I’ve never seen or heard of a bloodless revolution
and year after year we keep on witnessing why.
I’m the reluctant spectator to the mess so called leaders make
as they play on and on with their people’s fate.
Through TV screens and digital platforms —
I see blood in the soil and smoke in the air,
breaths being snuffed out and nobody who cares.
Should I grab some popcorn for each horrific episode?
Or just flip the channel so my brain won’t implode?
There’s no justice or peace.
No liberty just death.
Whole villages and cities are bombed into ash and dust
while sirens blare like redemption songs.
Not everyone can flee from their war-torn homeland
hoping for refuge in some foreign promised land.
Not everyone will welcome you if you dare to arrive
and you’re faced with the cost of just staying alive.
Nobody can afford war —
the cost is too high.
The body count will keep rising right up to the sky.
We’ve seen it all before;
women, men and children
forced to exist among marching boots and rifles
and strangers wearing metal hats,
people going from having a little something in life
to using empty tins as cups
and being left without a pot to piss in
or a place to bathe their skin.
Praying for their lives— but is that living?
What the hell are the rest of us praying for?
What the hell is the whole world fighting for?
Seems the world is always on the edge of total disaster;
will we lose our capacity for love — and for laughter?
The weight of the world is too much to bear.
Finding the will to stand up gets more and more scarce.
Will we let this living bring us all down?
For now, without the calm — we carry on somehow.