Cooked Potatoes

  Home after Home flattened by bombs or explosives, people have been displaced, shoved to and fro like cattle murdered, ten by ten, dozen by dozen, in hundreds. Little children, while they play in the streets, women as they walk to the wells, men searching for a bag of flour, all expendable, gone! But no flags fly at half mast for them no one hunts down their murderers, crying “War!” The slayers, instead, are received by officials of western ‘democracies’ while their hit men, in camouflage uniforms go house to house with long guns, grenades, drones… until all life has been extinguished. We watch hold our breaths. In the streets spattered with corpses, amidst the dust and rubble hope rises, like a miracle, a shimmering butterfly.