One Thousand Faces

© 10 September 2004, The Griot Poet

And yet another milestone crossed... 1,500.

One thousand faces
Stare at me from a web site.

One thousand smiles
Communicate hopes for a future, education, living standards, pride.

One thousand uniforms
Of various branches and ethnic stripes,
Spit and polished, strac and true.

One thousand families
Once beaming with pride,
Bury their heads in tear-soaked pillows
Photographer’s punished for letting them see their children’s coffins in the news.

I cry one thousand tears
And pray a single drop of moisture here
Will seed their resurrections.

“The day became a day of wrath, of trouble and distress, of waste and desolation. Darkness. Gloominess. A day of trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, against the high towers.
“We walked as blind men.
“Our blood poured out as dust and our flesh as dung.” *

One thousand faces
Attached to bodies
Charged into battle bravely,
For the charred remains of their brethren,
For a threat unrealized in ancient Babylon,
For their loved ones they’ll see no more.

For our country.

Demanding nothing more from
Their nation
Than: TRUTH!

* “That day [is] a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of waste-ness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, A day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high towers. And I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the LORD: and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as the dung.
” (Zephaniah 1: 15 - 17)