A Poem for Syria

I wrote this after returning from living in Damascus for a year and a half before the revolution began. I've adjusted the death toll acordingly, it was originally10,000 at the time of writing.

I wanna write a poem so deep, 

It will creep into the collective unconscious and change the world, 

a poem that launches us into a new way of thinking, 

this place is burning and all the while Nero f------ fiddles while we sit drinking in front of our big screen TVs and I ponder these riddles in the midst of happy hour

in the Land of the Lost

at what cost did we follow this trail of bought souls to where we are today? How 40 years ago in Ohio four dead and the song's still on the radio, but across the world 500,000 and counting in the place where civilization began amounting to nothing less than the fact that

the lives of these people mean

less than nothing.

with no oil or resources to co-opt, to spoil, they are stranded, Their cries and prayers unanswered.

 But you see, to me, these people mean more than a number steadily climbing on the evening news, 

They long to be free but are torn asunder, the body count rising and still they choose 

To face the snipers and tanks and the ranks of secret police and secret jails which leave no survivors with tales to tell,

These forgotten souls

who somehow showed me the comfort of home

for which I'd been searching all my life,

who saw only good in me, gave only good to me despite the fact that they're surrounded by hardship and strife, 

who, to this day send me messages of encouragement while their mother land is burning to the ground without whom I never would have found the strength to truly be free,

to know that lives in me the power to change this world for the better in some small way and I pray that they find what they are looking for having done so much more for me

than they will ever know.

But as long as all is quiet on the western front, 

as long as we continue to live the dream, to make the scene, all this distant thunder doesn't mean a thing.

You have looked at me and seen nothing,

now hear my words and feel something.

*******FEEL SOMETHING*******

Were I to dull my soul to meet the mean, would it mean I was in, should I should shed my skin and trade it in for the new hotness so we could all have a draft and agree on just what this means? 

Should I stifle the scream within to a polite indoor voice? Given the choice I prefer to be this unbridled passion, all manic and unfit for human consumption and any presumption as to what I'm all about is about to be blown wide open,

I am the shout in the silence,

the creative violence

necessary to wake us from our slumber,

I am fearless and unencumbered by any pretense that paints me as strange and I will not change or rearrange what has taken me a lifetime to become.

I am full of love

and hope

and promise

And I promise if you give me half a chance,

you will find we are very much the same,

I'm just living inside out.