Ignorance And Bliss (Waves) Poem by Afia Gyimah

Roses are red
Violets are blue
My life is happy
I feel joy too and through
The sun it shines
The world it glows
A smile I create
As I stare into the trees of life
So full of birds
The leaves we never care to look at
Do you see how beautiful they are?
The birds that bring happiness
The birds that bring love
The birds that bring bliss
The sky
The grass
Every grain of sand
Every bit of dirt
So beautiful, our world
But the world grabs
The world suffocates
The world pulls
The world hates
The sky goes black
When the horrors are shown
Do you see them?
Do you see the blood?
The sky is empty
So far away
The sky is unreachable
You can't touch the sky
It's never been that way
You are stuck
Grounded
On a world that is masked
Masked with lies
Horrors we cannot see
Covered with the song of birds
The life of animals
The colourful land
A mask we ignore
A mask we do not care to look at
But why should we
When below the surface is an ocean
An ocean of black
An ocean of monsters
The ground is falling under our feet
The waves of a storm that never ends
Trying to pull us under
As the world crumbles
Crumbles into pieces
The tentacles of despair grab at our ankles
They wrap around our legs with a tight grasp
We cannot move
We can only watch
We can only feel
Where is the light?
The light we once knew?
It is dark here
The screams of pain and agony
Covering up the sounds of our own thoughts
Being dragged farther under the current
The rasping water sways our bodies
Back and forth
Back and forth
Back and forth
Drowning
The blood seeps from our eyes
We cry tears of pain
Red tears spilling
Spilling down our face
The talons of shadows, they scratch
Drawing crimson blood
We swim
A bloody ocean
Forced under the water
Drowning
Drowning
Drowning
There is no escape
The talons they tear
Our skin away
Flesh and bone
The bane of our existence
Ripped apart
Bones snapped
Whereas on the mask
Of life and beauty
To mimic but also to cover
A tree falls
Roots torn
The loss of another
A plea calls from under
Inside these walls
Our screams echo through the vastness
Unnoticed by ignorance
Considered but never heard