Poem: Hope the dead never wake up

August 8, 2014
Issue 

A dove
that flew off
just after the fall of Afghan Buddha
Didn’t have enough
Unoccupied airspace
Unoccupied skies
To flap its wings to restart the heart beats gone numb
Of zillions resting in
Graves
Segregated apart as
For the occupant and by the ccupied.
The names on the tombstones
of the graves of the occupied
Could later become undecipherable,
Though they
Far outnumber that of the occupants.

Hope the dead never wake up,
to scrutinize their underrepresented statistics,
to check the word limit of reports from Gaza,
to check the alignment of the editorials of newspapers
Whether they are left, right or center aligned,
Participate in war crime tribunal trials,
And to testify before the Geneva convention.

Hope the dead never wake up
To lament that there were once some giant
Buddha statues in today's Afghanistan.
Hope the dead never wake up,
if they did
all the cradles in this world
Wouldn’t help us sleep.

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