Helpless Tears

Primitive are the streets
These rubble laden scars of hatred
Where homeless and soldier morph as one
Where tattered cloth knows not uniform or Kevlar
Where rock and kerosene bottles
Archaic weaponry roil
Against tanks
IED
Rocket launchers
Suicide bombers

Corpses splayed
Like crushed cigarette butts
Atop blood-encrusted ashen plates

Mangy cats and dogs approach cautiously

Moonset and sunrise dust swirls
Carry noxious history
Across fallen walls
Shattered windows
Debris strewn walkways
Where stealth counting and identifying
Race to beat the burial sheets
Being draped over cruelty's bounty

Choking iPhone lenses post randomly
Pictures
Sounds
An abyss by numbers
Someone's
Anyone's
Moment of glory dismembered
Moment of fame undesired

A city away

A mother passes a laptop
Her daughter connected to the world
Swish pans of bodies
Men
Women
Children

Daughter freezes frame

Seizure

One's son
One's brother
Family blood spilled beneath the face
Rescued by a white sheet shroud 

Neither speak

Helpless tears fall

As more death lies in wait