by Jocelyn Ajami
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| Mahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images via The New York Times, November 13, 2023. |
In the competition
over who is more
the victim
who is more humane
no child votes.
No child, bruised
and maimed
battered and beaten
claims membership
to an aristocracy
of woes.
In the competition over
who is more
barbaric
no child, body
peppered with bullets
propounds…
No child whose lungs and
larynx collapse under
the weight of boulders
vindicates the winner
raising his mutilated
limbs in pride.
In the competition
over who is more
human
no child condemns
or commends
suffocating
underneath the flaming
rubble, abandoned
and unclaimed
in playgrounds
of slaughter.
Blood void of bias
splatters on stone
calligraphy of carnage
to which no child
hurls
a single stroke.
Jocelyn Ajami is an award winning painter, filmmaker and poet. Jocelyn has received several awards for her films, Oasis of Peace, Gypsy Heart and Queen of the Gypsies. She turned to writing poetry in 2014 as a way of connecting more intimately with issues of social conscience and cultural awareness. She has been published in several anthologies of prize winning poems. Born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, she speaks five languages and lives in Chicago, Illinois.