Bleeding Indigo (Flowers For The Masses) Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

Bones are spilled into a sea of graves.
Spiked tongues speak as though flesh were a slight.
Closed hearts drown like a ship full of slaves,
chained by depths that are blacker than night.
Life in the womb is death in a tomb.
So small the fingers; so soft the hair.
Cold, sterile heartbeats pulse in the room.
Life ends a life with no love to spare.

A rocket, a glare, bullets to burn,
and shattered limbs are limping to flee.
Lawmakers talk while the helpless mourn.
A sheath of flesh falls and fades, set free.
Ruin and rubble occupy homes
once filled with laughter and life and love.
Now silent the streets as each soul roams.
There are no stars in this night above.

Sunflowers sprout from a soldier's hand,
his comrades stacked like Matryoshka dolls.
Red fields glisten as blood soaks the land
while Putin hides behind Trojan walls.
Snippets and glimpses rattle the screen,
crowded bunkers of human debris.
War is too much, a bloody machine.
How could this not matter much to me?

Women are treated less than a man.
Ideology rules religion.
This is the hold on Afghanistan,
and a world deprived of its vision.
Borders have buckled, nations to fall.
Lawfulness lays in gutters of blood.
In the hands of hate, we are all small,
built on the bodies buried in mud.

There's not enough life for me to write
of wildflower dreams trampled in death,
not enough roses, not enough light
to let go the dying cusp of breath.
Bleeding indigo, my heart is sad.
No more gold-rimmed, rose-colored glasses.
So for the good trampled by the bad,
I offer flowers for the masses.