Selected Silence

Selected Silence

If a Buddhist monk falls in Myanma Naingngandaw
And Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council
Smashes cameras and lets no sound out of the country
Do the NCGUB still cry for change?
If a women in the jungle Bukavu villages of Congo stops screaming
Will anyone know it’s still rape?
If a Hutu is born is it genetic that they hate and will grow up
To kill a Tutsi?
If a refugee camp in Durfar is overrun by the painted white Janjaweed trucks
And al-Bashir double-speaks about someday soon
Do the Fur, Zaghawa, and Massaleit ethnic groups still die?
If a Kikuyu is hunted down with rocks and an ax
Can he love his neighbor Kalenjin?
When a Shi'ite joins the militia to wipe out the past of Sunni domination
Does it make a ripple in the number of who’s dead?
If the US waterboards someone who dies
And the tapes are destroyed
Does any admit that it’s torture?
If a father from Detroit dies early because they have no health insurance
Is it mass murder or mass indifference or neglect?
A child’s eyes tears up, but they’re silent
For fear of retribution
Their burn marks are covered so as not to cause
Suspicion
And what don’t we hear that happens
With denied plausibility?
The sirens wail in our dark night
And it’s not the all-clear signal
What do we hear that crashes us on the rocks?
What don’t we hear that eats at our beings?
Who is listening to the cries of our mothers?
My ears are defended from the decibels of the afflicted
My eyes glaze over from the sheer numbers of the dead
And the missing
I can’t comprehend the suffering
I find no path that is not screaming to be heard or
Littered with the fallen
We can only start and comfort one voice at a time
And raise our voices to be heard by those causing this voice of silence