Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

Faced with itself
humanity once again reveals its boundless capacity for destruction.
How hardened must our hearts grow
to endure the inhumanity we choose for ourselves?
The black clouds gathering in the east are more than a storm;
they carry the promise of a future long feared—
an omen of misery, terror, and death.
No, war will never be a relic of the past.
Even now, bombs fall from the skies,
killing the innocence of the blameless
and shattering the dream of a world at peace.

Divided and discordant, the peoples follow leaders
who crave chaos.
Apathetic, the credulous march behind the warlord,
but they are not innocent—
for in this story, innocence has all but vanished.
My prayers go to those who long for peace,
even as they clean their weapons to face war.
Their path is a steep descent into the inferno’s storms,
from which none know if they will return.

For though all know when war begins,
none can fathom the full breadth of its devastation.
Those who chase imagined enemies
will find only their own demise.
Perhaps, before their fall, they’ll understand
they were never leaders but tyrants—
always more inclined to destroy than to create.

The vocabulary of such men is woefully narrow.
In their inability to find words,
they resort to weapons,
readier to command death
than to let peace flourish upon the earth.
They shed the blood of others
to ensure their names mark history’s pages,
even if those pages are steeped in infamy.

Down with these dictators who speak only the language of hate!
Let poets rise to power,
for they will never lack the right words.
A poet will never trade a flower for a bullet,
nor a kiss for all the power in the world.
A poet will find indescribable beauty
where others see only insignificance and discord.
A poet will always pen a verse of love
instead of a declaration of war.

And if their lexicon lacks the words
to sustain the pursuit of peace,
they will invent one—a word to inspire us all.
But what word could a poet create in this war
to fully describe the discovery of pain and death
by an innocent child?
And why must they even try?

At the edge of this madness lies extinction,
and there can be no glory,
no heroes,
in a war where none survive.
How tragic it would be if this were the end of humanity’s tale:
annihilation through greed and folly