Photo by Vijay Kalakoti

A mouse set its trap in the city of lights – this time
A barrage of unusual sounds, then tidal loss
Religion grows monstrous in the hands of faithless madmen
who blot out love and cast God in their own image
Prayer, they say, is the root of all evil nowadays
no longer a harmless pursuit, or gateway to compassion

In windowless rooms power brokers plot to match hate with hate
Death sweeps across the chess board and no one is safe
Venom drips into our veins, fear and reprisals a contagion
that fractures our communities – just as they foresaw
We rage mercilessly, pitilessly, hoodwinked desperadoes
our moral compass determined by their North

Scars multiply across our skin to form country boundaries
Statues of our forefathers weep for an earth that won’t heal
Everyday people pray for an end to man-made strife
Every child’s eyes hold the promise of doom
and a bearded fellow full of loathing somewhere
gloats that he won because we surrendered our gentleness

We whittle away our freedoms, bunker up in entrenched positions
while fanatics stoke the fires of inhumanity
The memory of attacks recedes into the obscurity of our collective memory
while the disenfranchised build their bombs of hate and self-loathing
and we lie in thrall to the anointed powers of the day
comforted by the simplicity of non-complexity

Stop.

Lest we forget that fortune biology and geography determine
who we love and who we mourn, who is right and who is wrong
I will cry hot tears for innocents and the bereft
wrap humanity’s flag around my mortal frame
I will creep into the dark and shine my love
the next time the bullets rain, and the next

And pray for love to endure