DUCT TAPE**

"Abdullah Thani Faris al Andzi lost both his legs in a U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan while he was employed as a humanitarian aide worker. After his first leg was amputated, he was arrested by bounty hunters and turned over to U.S. forces. While in custody, his second leg was amputated. He has been held at Guantanamo since 2002, where he has received inadequate medical treatment and often been forced to walk using prosthetic limbs held together only with duct tape."
- from "poems from Guantanamo: the Detainees Speak"

~~~~~

As the bombs rain,
they tell us they are for peace.
So I ask them:
Do flowers bloom
or grass grow
held in such chains;
or seeing humans
suffer such pains?
~~~~~
Mountains weep,
and I speak in tear filled oceans,
whose ebb and flow
erode my beach of hope;
all I have left are curses
told in Arabic qasid verses.
~~~~~
As the bombs rain,
ripping apart innocent people's limbs,
they say they are for peace.
And I ask:
will birds fly
and sing their songs,
or will they,
like so many of us,
have only plastic legs
held together with duct tape?

~~redzone (Aztec Warrior) 9.23.10
(Another earlier poem I wrote using a different pen name)