I cannot go to sleep at night

knowing I am under

the same sky

as  frightened child 

dancing in falling 

shrapnel

like its summer rain

next to 

pained mother

holding nothing but

little hearts with no heartbeat

and little lungs full of only dust.

So before you declare war

a justified murder, 

you must first tattoo 

the names of every fallen solider

to your lips

 so you’ll taste the bitterness

 of goodbyes

every time you kiss

your own child on the cheek. 

Soldiers were children once, too.

Just like every single hand

that has ever held a gun

has also 

at one point

held a flower. 

I don’t know when the roses

turned to rifles,

but I do know that we cannot expect

an entire generation

of a nation

that has known only ashes

to grow up to be suddenly peaceful.

I know that flower beds

cannot grow 

from our missile heads.

I know that it is time 

to wake up and smell the bloodshed 

because we choose 

to see the world

 in only shades of red

not realizing 

that white flags 

never stay white for long

in war. 

I know gunpowder

will never be stardust 

no matter how much we shoot it

into the skies

just like an earthquake 

can never bring

stillness and sanity.

Yet we wonder why poetry 

cannot be built from debris.

Then, we  build churches on Fault Lines

and expect air raid sirens

to sound like wind chimes.

But our crime 

is not in the fact that

we fight back. 

It is not that we fire a gun.

Its that we close our eyes when we do.