Witnessing the blood baths, the bombings, the massacre
Of God’s people, children’s bodies everywhere,
And octogenarians expire slowly and quietly in horror.
The undistorted and the vivid images of terror,
The ugly realities of life for millions; what a rancor!
The large plumes of gray phosphorus smoke! There is nowhere
To hide. Showers of shrapnel, unprecedented heavy shelling,
White clouds of death and discriminating lynching
Of everything that breathes, walks, runs and flies;
This is war, this is sheer terrorism! The God-flies;
Where are they when they are needed?
Our world should not be so muted,
So insensitive toward so many.
This is a shameful disaster, a pity…
To do nothing and hope for the awakening of the gods;
The worms, the flies, the rats and the tods
Must be happy. What an inhumane feast!
In this young century, we cannot find Peace.
The photos are real, and dying is not a joke.
The lenses of the camera recorded the blood soaked
Pregnant women, their babies shredded
By the wrecked fires of the big guns.
No one is spared: fathers, mothers, sons,
And even young girls are arrested,
Humiliated, stepped on and eventually annihilated.
This is the state of our human family.
Centuries old victims are now the perpetrated
Beasts that devour nymphs, angels and dignity.
The moon can only helplessly weep,
The gods and the geese are high by the burning bodies.
Terrorism is your vocation; falling asleep,
Amid this, is criminal, we should unequivocally denounce the bullies.
Big gun shipped helicopters can only destroy; they don’t make Peace,
H bombs only create more activists, more militants and more beasts.

Copyright © 2009, Hébert Logerie, All rights reserved.
Hébert Logerie is the author of several collections of poems.

When the tale of the kite wraps itself around your neck,
And yet continues to fly, freely
You should now know that freedom to one comes at a cost to the other.

But you must wonder, as Jupiter and Zeus watch this storm,
that leaves nothing more than dust in their eyes;
It's funny how kites are a symbol of freedom when they are actually tied to a glass-coated cotton string.
The same cotton, that another boy who looks directly into your eyes could have worn.
It's funny how when one side of the coin is painted in platinum
and the other side struggles to know whether it's still a coin with value as it is being corroded.
Yes, they were one coin. Once.

The tulip blooms fade before the foliage dies,
every flower that dies is not reborn
But on the land it does, is.
When the flower is no more,
the green stem still remains.

But did the flower die from the wasp
that stung its nectar and perhaps even the pollen
or did it die from the feet that stepped upon
because they were inside the duststorm that disallows them to look at the ground.

Do all flowers that die are reborn?
How many flowers can one wasp even sting?
How many times can you stomp over one flower until it has no petals but only your footprints?

As you wonder,
The tail of the kite has been detached from its throne,
You look, as you wonder, if this is freedom or that was.

And another Hassan chases it yet again.