No. 219 - 700 Miles Per Hour

It silently falls

A sour whisper

Through the atmosphere

at seven hundred miles an hour

Its nose penetrates clouds

effortlessly, indifferent

Gaining speed

Gravity holds it to a straight line

Below it are swing sets

And sidewalks

And markets

selling fruit and fish

In its autonomy lies its evil

It has no name

No feelings

Children play hide and seek

They laugh

and smile

and ask their mothers for dessert

They hold hands

lost in their imaginations

Terribly innocent

It’s within earshot now

descending from the skies

Mothers grab their babies

They run for their lives

Urinating themselves in fear

Children can’t run fast enough

and their mothers know it

It lands

One thousand pounds

of TNT

and steel

A point was made

But who learned the lesson?

7,000,000,000 pounds of bombs were dropped by all forces in WWII. SEVEN BILLION POUNDS OF BOMBS.

15,000,000,000 pounds of bombs were dropped by the United States alone during the Vietnam War. FIFTEEN BILLION POUNDS OF BOMBS.

*Composed, Edited, and Published in Atlanta, GA