Why is this still happening?
So silently, yet still reported;
At great lengths they will go
- to make sure its reported.

Although the Government are in denial,
We are grateful for those who report
The ongoing slaughter of innocent people
Men, women, and children are caught.

Journalists themselves are risking their lives
To tell the world whats happening;
There can be no more dangerous a place
From which to report the sickening.

So where is the world?
The situation is dire -
And unless action is taken
...its going to catch fire.

People are still leaving,
For Tanzania,
A country now turning them back
Back home to face their fears.

But where are the World?
What is holding you back?
How can you just sit there
And ignore these attacks?

For I for one cannot,
And I have no power to act,
All I can do, is spread the word
And hope someone...will act.

Yes there was a time,
When a hundred thousand were killed each day,
That is hard to comprehend,
Not just for me - but for locals who got away.

It may not be happening quite on that scale,
But the fact that it is still happening,
Surely is warning enough.....
And the Government is in denial...

I am worried for Burundi,
But why is no one else?
How can you just sit there
- are you leaving it for someone else?

The attacks are still happening,
Day after day after day,
Bodies are still being found....
Before being rushed into the ground.

Such brutality is hard to stomach,
And I have the stomach for much,
But when I encountered the plight of Burundi,
That was just too much.

I dont know if I will finish this poem,
Because the images I now have are horrific,
So what must it be like....
For those having to live there with it?

Imagine the fear,
The total despair,
And the feeling of more
- that the world doesnt care.

It can be no wonder
That this little country
Is the unhappiest on Earth,
It is so clear to see.

Or for those who choose maybe
To see what others refuse,
Or ignore, or belittle,
Cover up- whatever word you use.

Each day there are reports,
Women and children found dead,
Their throats have been cut,
Bodies lay with no heads

They are *****, they are tortured,
For hours, days, or months,
There are forced disappearances,
- those run into the hundreds.

A machete is no longer an agricultural tool,
It has become a symbol of terror,
It is used to slice, tear, stab, torture;
It is a symbol of ******.

What must go through these peoples minds,
When they see someone with a machete,
What was once a necessary tool,
Now been used to butcher so many.

The genocide may be over,
And few even know it took in Burundi,
But the torture, the butchering continues
It continues horrifically.

I am a strong person,
I have read about, seen, and stomached a lot,
But there is nothing that even comes close
To how this puts my stomach in a knot.

The info is there if you seek it,
And please do - its risky to report;
I wonder how much more blood must be spilt
Until someone decides those responsible must be caught

The images they are many many,
The videos they are there too:
But why is it just me seeing this?
Where are the rest of you?

The day I saw the video,
I will never forget,
After what I had suffered myself,
Again I will never forget.

I do not regret what I saw,
For I believe it to be necessary,
Necessary for people to see,
But - those in Government - not me.

Now I have to be careful,
Because of what I saw,
That video put me in hospital -
It triggered something in my core.

It is spread through desperation,
To get a message to the world,
But I was one of only 3 to have seen that,
Maybe rightly so, but also absurd.

Pictures are horrific enough,
Sometimes missing parts are "shaded",
But then comes along another
The shadings not there, its a person beheaded.

But it it not the effect on myself,
Which pains me so much,
It is the fact that this is still happening,
And the world is so out of touch.

I now have to be careful,
But I will not stop,
I wont stop spreading the word,
Until this killing in Burundi stops.

The graphics are hard to put to words,
The testimonies harder still,
But I have tried to help you see,
Without making myself more ill.

The Imbonerakure,
The youth wing of the CNFDD,
Even seeing that word now..
Makes the panic rise within me

For they and the security are responsible,
For the majority of the brutal killings,
The ****, the torture, the unthinkable,
People are not even safe when leaving.

They come out at night,
The raid peoples homes,
**** entire families,
While others watch on.

They harass in the streets,
The harass at the borders,
They are everywhere,
Butchering as they are given orders.

The President thinks he was put there by God,
This is nothing shocking I know,
For for Burundi it means a lot,
It means he may stay for ever, death will be all they know.

There are memorials built,
To the many genocides to take place,
Each containing thousands of skulls,
Cracked where the machete went through the face.

Thousands and thousand of skulls lined up,
Of course there are no bodies -
From "Ear to Ear" was how the saying went,
As each head was cut from its body.

It has become so common to find someones head,
Something that for us here would cause fear in itself,
That now in Burundi there are proverbs and sayings,
School children quote wise words from these heads themselves.

Headless bodies float along the river,
Headless bodies dumped in bags with the *******,
A machete taken to the throat and then to the torso,
Ripping flesh, drawing blood, organs pulled out of the body for show.

For this is a living nightmare,
Blood flowing down roads and rivers,
Finding a hand, a head, a liver...
Would make many strong people shiver.

People are literally hacked to death,
Occasionally they are shot,
If I ever found myself in that position
I would outright beg to be shot.

The person I saw die in the video,
Took way more than 10 minutes for sure,
As hit throat was cut, he was stabbed, his skin ripped,
His blood spurted violently across the floor

I refuse to go into more detail than that,
For thats the one that triggered me,
I will never watch it again,
But I do want those in power to see.

Will someone please help Burundi?
I feel I have not done it justice with this poem,
The machete, the blood, the horror...
Please help... we all know who is to blame.

We all know....

Drunk kisses don’t count here
Not even with me not even
when it’s the first drink.

And you said
“boys don’t want smart girls,
boys don’t fall in love with Tomboys.”

So I gave up my dreams I
Gave up hockey I
Started wearing makeup.
I began saying stupid, shallow things.

On my unhappiest days I still want to blame you.
when I can’t speak without doubting myself or
changing the infliction of my voice so I sound
like I am begging.

I remember being brave at 16.

Until you told me,
“boys don’t want girls who never listen
boys don’t like girls who can stand on their own feet.
Just sit quietly and I will
Break you piece by
Tiny piece I will
Make you hate me.
I will make you hate me but you will
Never have the strength to leave.”

Going down the stairs on that March Saturday afternoon
I looked out of the landing window at the torrential rain
It was then that I heard a loud hollow thump as he fell
And I was never to see my father alive again.

I was just a little shy of my thirteenth birthday
It was the unhappiest and saddest of my days
My mother now a widow had lost her best friend
And the pain that followed hurt in many ways.

Five brothers and our sister had lost a rudder
To the ship that is a family going through life
And the empty place not filled beside the table
Strikes at the heart as with a rusty knife.

Time passes and my brothers number just one
And my sister makes us three and not now six
For over four decades and five my kin have fallen
And that’s one statistic nothing can ever fix.

Never fail to love the ones you care for
Never fail to tell them how much you care
For sometimes if you turn around for too long
You turn your head and they’re no longer there.

©Joe Wilson – Family down 2014

I want you to expect from me
greatness, loveliness, reject
from me the loser I know resides
in my depths, hides behind
excuses of tiredness, fire this
engine with the thrill of
anticipating excellence,
participating in my self-
annihilation of that little girl
who lost sometimes, who tried
for the joy of it, boy did
she fail, but she also had fun,
her sun has set, and risen
in her stead is this high achiever
who rarely tries, buys favor
with lies, savors the rare
moments of feeling special
and tears flesh from bone
the rest of the time trying
to expose herself to more light,
fighting the instinct to go
extinct at first sight of
being a ******* loser. shoes hurt
and waist aches from sculpting
my body to be high stakes,
steak me through the heart
I've become a vampire
leeching off of the validation
of others, salivation at the
thought of turning you on,
without consideration of my
own pleasure, measure me in
victories please, and don't deduct
all my last places, faces that
set in disappointment of my
false anointment, I'm not the
chosen one, I'm just becoming
the unhappiest version of myself,
a ******* of what could have been
would that I had let go of
being a constant one-woman show
that shocks and awes, causes
locks to unlatch and people to
patch me up with ribbons
and medals, if it's not blue or gold
I'm convinced you won't be sold
on me, and I'm constantly for sale,
frail and fettered as I am, I pale
at the idea that I'm too fat
or thin for you, so much so
I forget what I look like, what
I might be if I knew nobody could
see me, how I long for that
invisibility, an ability to
become a ghostly shape,
mostly vapor and smoke that
could choke the insults I've
heard along my way, why did they say
those things to me? can't they see
how fragile I am, not agile, I can't
dodge the bullets of snide remarks
shot my direction, sniped from afar
and bludgeoning me up close
begrudging acceptance from
those I love most, feeling as
much like a wound as the
untarnished truth, my varnish of
youth is fading, too, and soon I
won't have my age to fall
back on, I lack the small
support that keeps me standing and
I've got canes hidden in my coat
to keep me afloat,
to link this boat to the sky,
so I don't sink but don't get too high.

Poetry
should also be
about life's
nitty-gritty
how could
we live happily
if all things
are taken
too seriously?

the unhappiest land
there dwells philosophy
how bitterly the thinkers argue
to the greatest degee of absurdity
none would agree to agree
all choose to be thorny
they wallow in ambiguity
rhetoric,  semantics and enmity
they forget food and sleep
'  we are all too busy'

  epilogue-- end of my story:

  they never stopped talking  
   they sat up for days--
   in total 43
   died of starvation
  
   do they deserve
   our sympathy?

My years at Andover, the oldest (1778) and arguably the best prep school in the United States, were the unhappiest of my life. Emotionally, I felt ancient. All but few of the teachers were as sodden with a kind of spititual sorrow as were most of the students. And while the campus with its spacious lawns and grand architecture was breathtakingly beautiful, and the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library would have made any university beyond proud, and all the facilities were many and first-class, paradoxically, the sum of those parts deprecated the whole . Yes, I, perforce, became learned, but at an exorbitant social and emotonal cost. Tone Grant, one of the gods of our class, because he was the quarterback of our football team, a fact that got him into Yale where he was and did the same, was indicted, tried, and convicted to 10 years in prison for embezzling over two billion dollars from customers of the company he ran. Did Andover and Yale inculcate in him the perverse values that led him to prison? He pleaded innocent before his trial, but over two billion dollars are a lot of dollars to explain away. Tone died of a heart attach in prison. My years at Andover ended with a ritual. All the graduates formed a large oval on the Great Lawn as the headmaster began to pass diplomas one at a time to his left. The first graduate would look at the diploma, and if he did not see his name imprinted in gold ink on it, he would pass it to the classmate on his left until every graduate had received his diploma. While this interminable ritual was taking place, I made a silent but solemn vow:  I would never again set foot on the Andover campus. Am I  proud I graduated from Andover, you might ask? I am proud I endured it. Others did not.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks