The Journalist Tripped the Refugee

                            “Success is survival”
                                             Leonard Cohen

The journalist tripped the refugee,
carrying a child,
the cameras scurried.
We watched and pondered,
divested from the moral impact of what we see,
our hands in our pockets
scrutinized their clothes, ripped on barbed wire,
wondered why they have cell phones.
People shouted: “Not welcome”,
the ones on the balcony threw sharp objects,
their kingdom for a shining star.
Our planet, a poorly moonlit shipwreck,
we have nothing and yet we erect barriers,
draw salt marks, stomp the ground in anger,
feel our footing more solid than their fleeting lives,
crumpled in a plastic bag.
We planted thorn bush in their terrains vagues,
colored gray spaces,
banged drums in complicit silences.
If we make inventory of our specie’s failure,
take stock of our miseries, miser-eyes,
we will find out that we have nothing but each other.
We dropped this burden of truth
in the rotten gutter,
closed the shutters and went to sleep,
leaning on our gray walls,
clutching our blind spotted history,
telling tales of light in the age of darkness.
And when the morning comes,
we paraded our goods, streaks of sunrays,
to sell them at open markets of our indifference,
we forgot that they too come from the sun.

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