AFTERTHOUGHT
Tell the displaced they will find a home,
if they do not die while walking.
Tell the maimed that in five years’ time
they will have learned to crawl again.
Tell the buried they will only live
inside the beating hearts of those remaining.
Tell the orphaned that the sympathy of others
will never heal their loneliness.
Tell the abandoned they may one day
be remembered for their fortitude.
Tell the starved that skin and bone
has satisfied its own hyperbole.
Tell the missing they are simply numbers now,
lost within the ether of statistics and conveniency.
Tell the children you have not forgotten them
when their images have ceased to occupy our TV screens.
Tell whoever wants to listen that the world is surely lost
if the dead are but an afterthought.
WANT
A silence of drones finds solace in an empty sky,
and below,
hope.
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