An alternative to guns

An alternative to guns.

A shiny marble stole my heart as it landed into a shrapnel crater
The joy it brought me as I huddled over its target was greater.
Just another day escaping our daily ritual
Hoping our name escapes the obitual.

An alarm went off as we scurried our muddy bodies home
A scolding we expected my mother to erase
As she hurried to warm the gas tank
washing away the trace
Of a shattered land.

Our home is unstable but with all due respect
We bowed to our homeland
That shed tears of survival
In the prospect of Jesus
Crossing to Cana with his arrival.

As shadows covered the valleys
Weary of what’s to come
Fed with pita bread Sandwiched with full bellies
we drifted to sleep feeling numb

Childhood?
My brain recalls it With images of popcorn
Keeping our mouths busy
For little bodies that shrapnels haven’t torn.

Those memories live through me
As an American I became
To pass down to my children
A new home I proclaimed.

That river that flowed in a bloody land
Connected with a flowery creek
that my children had at hand
Knowing little of that world
Where children are fed pita
Savory, not bland

Peace is granted in more ways than one
As danger crept upon us
In trophies to all or some
Privileged are our children
Escaping the physical shrapnels
Indifferent to none

It is the land of plenty
Opportunity, self confidence
Slow to acknowledge
It’s poisonous substance
Lurking our sons
Into a peaceful opulence
With a gloomy blanket for pain
An alternative to guns.

Rivers flow with good and evil
To the land of forgiveness
Or the medieval upheaval.

Those shiny marbles are our children
Sent forth through life
Juggling between villain and villain.

An alternative to guns. A shiny marble stole