It was my understanding that is not failed
took to my knowing from early age schoolhouse did
    And the books piled and the room
            insisted more
        The teacher beckons
With order saying and call of schoolbell and look
And the smell of school books on the hard wood desk
        Myself to get took
            That second
to the still teaching room and set down.

    My first day began with the room-
kids and the older kids of the advanced years calling my name
    Around the pole and the waving flag
            And I rose
        In doing homage
And talked toward it a crowd of all my peers.

‎There lies a land behind the smoke,
‎Where silence screams and hearts are broke
‎
‎Where lullabies drown in bombs and drones
‎And cradles turn to shattered stones
‎
‎Babies cry with lips so dry
‎No blood, no milk, no tear left to cry
‎
‎No schoolbell rings, no hospital stands,
‎Just bones and ruins buried in the sand
‎
‎They queue for crumbs and bleed for rice
‎A bottle of water, the price of life
‎
‎Each has lost _ be it a child or spouse
‎a parent, a sibling or a shattered house
‎
‎Then phosphorus rains on wrecked-out souls
‎To burn their skin to elevate their pains
‎
‎And we the modern civilized race
‎Watch stage 5 famine take its place
‎
‎What further war-crimes must I define
‎Palestine bleeds while the world stays blind

_______
Paghunda Zahid