(Sing)  When I see mankind suffer. It is suffering

                                         All over the world.

 

                                        When I see the people suffer it is mid night

                                         For all man kind.

 

                                        Children are suffering. Women raped and

                                        Killed. A bloody, bloody harvest. What is it

                                        To yield?

 

                                        Midnight all over the world.

 

 

 

 

                                                      Vortex

 

A million stars from now

after planets have spun

out and away from their gravity

like unto children cast from an

angry womb  --

 

this sun will be no longer

and, the heat of our hate

will have destroyed its memory.

 

And, those other planets

will remember not our seas

or out art or our mountains

but, our wars, our genocides,

our annihilations.

 

A million stars from now

past the sufferings we seemingly

love to create,

what will be said of us?

 

Afterwards, what will be left

 

 

In the world village.

 

A hollow sky?

One bird sitting on a

tree limb?

The wood burning?

The earthen floor with

foot prints?

 

The severed limb?

The empty compounds?

Shell casings?

An abandoned flute?

 

A drum left standing?

Sleeping mats?

 

Cooking pots emptied?

 

An African dog let howling?

 

The ghost of a dead girl’s comb?

 

That which is fine and fissured above

the bones?

 

Those finite, textured earmarks

of torment and suffering.

 

  

                                                 The Child’s Game

 

  

The oldest boy is the first to start the game.

He is tall and long, with a wise face and,

He takes a little boy by the hand and says,

“Let’s play the game today. The game

I told you about. Birds. Tree Gods. Beautiful

Stones, we will search for them all and sing

When we find them.”

 

 

The little boy, his hand in the older boy sets

Out with him and the other boys are following.

Their feet in fragile sandals and easy to blister

But they are most certain they will be home soon.

The pace is quick as they hear angry voices behind

Them and a sharp, clacking sound they do not

Know.

 

But, they are cutting through the trees and  they

Singing songs sometimes but very softly. And,

The oldest boy looks uncertain sometimes if

They will find the tree god as he has told them they

Will. His face is wet sometimes but he says his

Eyes are simply tired but well.

 

“It is time,” he says all at once, “ We must play the

quiet, quiet part of the game. And, the boy’s do

crouching in the bushes as the angry men with guns

look for them.” Very, very quiet they are. Except

for one, who stands up to see and is no more.

 

The oldest boy tells them when the angry men go,

the boy who is no more, “Is merely sleeping.”

As he tells them are the others on the roads, so many

others, with the redness on them. He says the soil

is the unpleasant smell, not them, never them.

 

He tells the boys they have to count five thousand trees

a day and then they can sleep.

 

And, that the they are doing well with the drinking

very little game and the eating even less.

 

The smaller boys begin to look back over their

shoulders as home gets further and further away.

As they see others who pass them and are playing

the game are not as happy. Are afraid are talking

quickly. Some of the women are hurting, have been

hurt. The boys know. The boys feel the pain. The

boys see the burnt faces. The burnt bodies. But,

Then, they walk on.

 

And, the littlest one still holds the oldest one’s hand, sleeps

near him and says, “It is all right. I know the game is

an ugly game. Why do adults play it? I know. But, if we can

just make it to the end of it together, I will be glad.

 I will always be grateful to you.”

 

 

The oldest boy promises to try and they walk, these

children, grown men would kill, their parents dead,

their lives ruined, they walk until they can walk no more.

 

They eat leaves. They weep. But, they continue.

Then they are there, the oldest boy says after weeks

and weeks of suffering, they are there where the

people who are not from where they are, are.

 

They are lined up. The little ones taken away from the

larger ones at first. Then given back.  Lost. Lost.

Redness every where. The others who played the game still

afraid. Some dying. Some scarred. Some sick beyond

belief.

 

They see people they knew playing what the oldest boy

calls “The sleeping game beneath sheets.”

 

 

Lost. Lost.

 

They are a little stronger. They are a little healthier. They

might make it to America. The group of them together.

The youngest boy asks, “What is this America?” And,

the oldest boy answers, “I hear it is a very nice place, a place

where we can learn to play many, many new games.”

 

 

                   And, Yet.

 

 He is young and, from the Sudan.

He is long and dark with a face that

Shows the history of all mankind.

He is a boy.

An African boy.

 

And, he has seen things. Done things.

He knows how to pierce with the sharp

Edge of a machete.

 

He knows the world is dark in more

aspects than one.

 

But, he is in America now. And, in a poetry

class. And, his teacher is a young girl of

no more than 17.

 

She is as white as a blossom and her eyes

are a honey brown.

 

She has lips the color of fruit.

He remembers dreams of fruit when he was

without it, with out food at all and thought he

would die.

 

She is asking him to write poems about

the Sudan, about his experiences.

But, he boyish ways. His boyish ways

call out for a victory.

 

And, yet he is writing loves poems about her.

 

Love poems for a new life.

Love poems from his heart.

Love poems that spill forth like water

Onto hands before a shared dinner.

 

“My love. This poem that fills me

And comes into my soul from you

is for the feel of your face. For the

smoothness of the skin of your neck.

For, the arch of your nape. For the

soft whispers of hair that kiss your brow.”

 

 

“The one I love is beautiful beyond compare.

Her arms and breasts bring sighs into my

quivering soul. Her hair is silk too rare to touch.

If she is wine, I am drunken upon her, lost to

her taste. I will taste and taste until there is no more.

I would follow her through the sands of the desert

and then. She is a swift as the birds in flight. Her

Hands are the patient warmth of the sun.

In her I see no flaw or fault. Only in the world…

Only in the world. Only in the world.

 

 

Come Love, show me how to change the world.

How to make it fashioned after the kindness of your

soul. How to change the now into the what should

be. Teach and I will listen. Each word etched upon

my waiting heart.

 

  

The War Ghost

 

There is a girl running.

She is running in your sleep.

You raped her mother

brutally before her, then killed

her mother and her brother.

 

And, all because they differed

from you.

 

You were set to kill again.

 

But, when things became bad

the idea came to you.

 

You put down your weapons

and donned the clothes of

the dead, joined the ranks

of the refugees and walked

away.

 

But, the girl is still running

in your head.

 

They did not know you were one

that would have killed them.

 

You seemed affable, kind.

 

 

You went to the refugee camp.

 

You went on to America.

 

But, at night your hands are bloody.

And, you still see the girl, the tiny

girl you could have let go, running

until, you shoot her.

 

 

Kill and kill again. Kill and then protect

One’s self. Say that the other side is

not human. When will the anger in mankind

Cease? When all is sand? When there is no one

Else left to hurt?

 

 

The girl is running, running with all the fear

in the world inside her chest, running

to see tomorrow.

 

You shot and shot again and took it away from

her. Took it away from many others before

her too.

 

In your dreams she is running, running on the

dry, hard, dirt road.

 

                        ----------Romella Kitchen

 

Romella Kitchen is the author of Hip Hop Music (Main Street Rag). She is lives in Pittsburgh, PA.

 

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content © - Romella Kitchen

Music: © - H P Chourasia

Image Source - http://saindarfur.org/darfur_photos/