sumthin' i wrote after seeing a documentary on Rwanda.

Blood shed on floating city
in a place where trees used to
grow, people used to laugh, cry
but then somehow died.
Oh, Rwanda!
Your fields are filled with tears
shed by families torn between love
for their country and love for their
own blood and seeds.
Oh Rwanda!
Politics...
red tape
civil war on yourself?
Black on black genocide.
Where's the sense in this?
Deep pain.
Dead bodies floating in this
place that used to be vital.
Floating graves in milky water.
Oh, Rwanda!
Skeletons in grass.
Soldiers shooting down governments that are trying to fly in resources to help your country?
What sense does this make?
Bloody clothes, fields of sadness and bodies stacked against walls, why does the world sit by and do nothing.
Oh, I know.
Red tape.
Government heads bickering over simple bullshit while you constantly are fading away in the wind.
Quietness fills the spaces where children used to play.
Now there's no one in the churches to hear the surmons or inhabitants of the houses where women used to cook for their families.
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust?
Oh, Rwanda!
Why didn't we see the pain and try to help sooner than we did?
Why didn't we see that you were a beautiful land of people who were torn apart by your own hands.
Was it simple anger?
Simple hands that didn't understand real destruction?
Oh, Rwanda!
(c) 2004 by Pam Osbey