This is Our War

A Poem by Daisy Tozer

Thoughts on Syria and how I believe that we (Europe & the US) should help the immigrant crisis and not turn people away.

At the moment in an east torn by war
Children come knocking at death's door
With pale bloodless faces
And soul stricken eyes
Syrian cities echo with cries
But death has locked his door to more tiny ghosts
He's taken enough in
With the immigrant crisis
Death's helped the most
So he condemns them to purgatory
Condemned like Syrian life boats un-rescued at sea
Aleppo is a carcass
Gutted and raw
The bombs have taken the lives of hundreds
To come: many more
Assad is sadistic
A killer dictator
Genocide to his own people
Yet an alleged "chemical hater"
Trump in retaliation stepped up to the mark
His airfield bombing lit a spark
The US and Middle East are on edge
It seems that soon there will be no more peace pledge
And the people of Europe
Have staunched the flow
Of people fleeing from their own people
"They're stealing our homes"
Le Pen tells France that the immigrants must go
And somewhere in the ocean
A s****y life boat
With motherless children
Children-less mothers
And loverless men
Is swallowed up by the cruel sea
As they try to take their families away from the
Destruction
They can no longer flee
The terror attacks in Paris and Nice
Has led much of France to back Le Pen
To stop the immigrants
It's Trump all over again
The acts of the few don't justify that of the many
And ISIS and Assad seem to have taken Syria's
People and twisted them all
Into shooters and rapists
People that mob and people that maul
It's different for us
Over the sea
On our tiny safe islands
In our houses with our roofs and our beds
To condemn the chemical slaughter
A mother's goodbye to her daughter
And the countless dead
To their own tattered country
Who's flag is now blood and flame
Who's corrupt government has bought disgust and
Fear to Syria's name
But please I urge you to think
About your child
The precious life that you could somehow create
Who would grow to be your
Princess, your prowess, your mate
Who you held in your hearts
As you held tiny hands
As you walked hand in hand
Through English beach sands
Now you are in Syria, Aleppo or Damascus
Your child is not Zoe or Tom
But Amira, Ahmed or Yaman
You see your children turn to ashes
Those little hands that you held so tight
Are buried beneath the home you built
With your husband Mohamed
Who fought with the rebels
His body undiscovered
Lost in the desert
Now it is only you
And you're five months pregnant
Your only choice is to take to the sea
Find a boat gather no hope and try to flee
The destruction of all you knew and know
Run to Europe they have to help
The media will show them the truth
They will help you when they know
Know the thousands upon thousands
Of casualties
Know the obliteration of life
The torture of infants
The young and the innocent
Slaughtered in terror state prisions
The murderous genocide in Northwestern Idlib
The chemical asphyxiation
That your own government did
Our people are running from our people
Your children are dead
There is so much shrapnel lodged in your head
Marine Le Pen thinks France has done enough for the immigrant crisis
People are on side
After the attack today in Paris
It seems more likely with the election looming
That any pro-immigrant policy
Would have the French fuming
So Le Pen will become the "nouveau Président de la France"
I can understand you see
That people are scared
And fear sours so the nation angers
But if that was you
Your children dead
Several pounds of shrapnel lodged in your head
Your paralysed
You wanted to become a dentist, teacher or nurse
Now your just surviving as the pain and despair
Only gets worse
You have only what you had on you when the explosion
Hit
The taste of arak in your mouth
Your kaftan coated with the dust of your house
The house you made a home with your wife and children
Elias and Aya
They were inside when the bomb struck
You feel yourself begin to come unstuck
As neighbours with bloodied heads tattered sleeves
Stagger past your vision
And on your bended knee
You ask god silently
Why he did this to your family?
Your son and daughter of only two and three
The air becomes heavy and void of sound
Mortar, smoke and chaos
Bleeds all around
And your heart is choked out through your screams
As the sky falls to meet you
As your rise from your knees
Begin to breath
Begin to see
That your own country
Has made you bleed
Allah what has Assad done
What has ISIS done
Now God is all I can need
From their earthly bounds my
Family are freed
Lord have mercy and save me please
And in the twisted anarchy
You can see the rich
With their western clothes
Strewn rag-doll across the roads
The roads you walked
And knew and lived
The roads where you played
As a kid
Everyone screaming
And crying
No one is safe
Whether middle class
Light skinned
Child or waif
The bombs don't care
They do as they pleased
Watched the buildings wounded
Pouring dust
Saw the women dying
Pouring blood
And the sky is crying
Pouring rain
And the rain is swallowed by the flames
The all consuming flames
As the second bomb hits
And you are gone
Away to join your wife and kids
And "Breaking News!"
(This is ITV)
Turn it up
Move over I can't see
A policeman shot to death in Paris by terrorists
Oh god another one
France again will pay
No worries Le Pen
Will keep the immigrants at bay
The acts of the few don't justify the acts of the many
You are human
Privilege? Hell. I have plenty
They are humans with families
And lives
Their own religions, their own food, culture and beliefs
But you better believe that the same blood we all bleed
Red like the stars on the Syrian flag
The stars that shake as another bomb drops
Another newsworthy story
And your child's life lost
It's all very well this one woman for herself
But if we were in their situation then we would expect help
The Syrian war has been raging for six years
And now it seems your children's cries are falling on deaf political ears
Assad and ISIS are our modern evil
And the only ones who can protect people are people