Sudan's Perdition
by Odin odin@aflx.com — Read all 3,869 poems by Odin odin@aflx.com
With so many hot spots of man-against-man in need of attention around the globe, perhaps none continues as persistent and seemingly unsolvable as the barbaric Sudanese Civil War. (Image by AP)
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Sudan’s Perdition
by Odin Roark
Undulating heat waves mask
fear and misery bucking afternoon winds
as another oasis of starvation hunkers down,
dealing with Sudan’s norm,
hands flitting flies,
cups and bowls remaining empty,
distended stomachs aching for relief,
while nearby, well-fed rebels load weapons,
preparing their next massacre.
How lost the eyes of children,
the limp wrists of mothers,
the defeat and despair of hopelessness,
the invisible disease of infectious despair.
Such continues the turbulent genocide,
a fueled history of hate and apathy,
ethnic cleansing and conquest,
forever stoking the blast furnace of emotional erosion,
turning mind, spirit and body into airborne ash,
while survivors of withered and wrinkled hearts
wander aimlessly amidst the drifting dunes of human survival,
the exhausted escapees of atrocity,
wanting only to breathe another day.
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I read recently where, in situations like this, the news media has vanished, but modern technology enables people in the fray to become reporters, exposing the atrocities and sharing them with the world. For example, I read an article in the April Playboy about a rebel radio station that had moved from a beleaguered town in Syria across the border to Turkey to carry on its message of mostly music, driven out by the murderous ISIS. At the end of the article, Syrian rebels had driven the ISIS out of much of Syria, probably the reason they are moving into Iraq.
The situation in Sudan has been going on a very long time, similar to the one in Somalia. Only awareness like your poem and news from the region will get the people of Sudan the help they need.
Ron