Urban Wars Zone

A thought about the future of children living with daily violencee.

How can a child believe in God when she lives in an urban war zone?
How can she learn to walk in the light
when she feels unsafe in her home?
How can a child develop and grow
in the virtual absence of love?
When each day she feels only guilt
knowing not what she's guilty of.

Children living with death each day,
hearing gunshots while saying their prayers,
can think not of future dreams
only surviving present nightmares.
What will happen when these children are grown, knowing nothing of love or esteem?
How will they adapt to the larger world
which flaunts the American Dream?
Where everyone else seems to get what they want and labels it what they deserve.
Where a person is judged by how much he owns and not the purpose he serves.
How will these children get what they want, things they deserve of course?
They will get them the only way they know how, through terror and violence and force.

We must find a way to save our children,
find a way to keep them safe.
We must find a way to end urban war;
save our children before it's too late.
For, if we can't protect our children,
if they go on facing death each day,
then we better prepare for a future
of lawlessness , blight and decay.
©Linda Troxell