Somewhere in Mariupol,
the wind sifts ash that was a kitchen,
where a bread knife glints in a shadow
once called “morning.”
Children climb rubble,
searching for nickels of mercy
in bomb-shined streets.
Somewhere in Gaza, language
is the last corpse, syllables
crushed in open air.
A father cradles a photo,
a home – just pixels and dust.
The world watches;
the world’s thumb scrolls on.
In Omdurman, the dusk is sirens
and ululated warning,
a mother’s voice scarring hollow halls
where neighbours were erased in daylight,
where skin and name are reasons for death.
And somewhere, the dawn is forbidden;
women, draped like vanished nations,
move behind walls,
their laughter a rumour,
their footsteps chalk on a blackboard –
easily wiped, easily rewritten.
In boardrooms shadow-stitched
with flags and gospel,
they count souls like stock,
call hatred “faith,”
inscribe division in scripture and law,
bless borders with a handshake,
bless bombs with prayer.
And always, from the collapsed spire
of this empire, leaking rust and fortune –
chaos seeps, raw and hot.
Prometheus unchained o
nly to scorch the earth anew.
Here, democracy is a banner
fraying in the wind,
used to bandage wounds
it was made to inflict.
Ask not for whom the empire withers –
its decline is not a lesson, but a legacy;
its dying embers are flares
illuminating only the bones of joy,
the records of what it costs
when we forget
how to be human to one another.
© Bakchos 2025
