Look Beyond The Broken Men Poem by Mohammad Younus

Look beyond the broken men,
the wreckage at your feet.
Look further—see the world in fragments,
homes splintered into dust,
streets choked by the ashes of dreams.
A people adrift in the ruins of their past.

Children stare with eyes like vacant windows;
elders clutch memories too dense to name.
Hands reach out—not for pity,
but for proof that they still matter.
They shiver. They starve.
Yet they endure,
because hope is a stubborn flame.
It licks at the dark, refusing to die.

We do not love because we cannot see.
We cannot see because our grief
has seared our vision shut.
We mistake the cage of our suffering
for the sky.
Is it any wonder we strike out?
Not from malice,
but from the terror of being alone with our wounds.
We forget that the blade we wield
is the same one lodged in our neighbor's spine.

But what if we looked? *Really* looked.
What if we let the ache of strangers flood our veins?
What if we traced the lineage of every grudge
and found, at its root, a cry for mercy?
What if we admitted that hate is a language
we taught ourselves—
and that we are all its native speakers,
its casualties, its orphans?

And what if we stopped pretending
the chains aren't there?

We could.

We could be ice—not cold, but clear.
Still enough to reflect the truth:
that rage is a fire that cannibalizes its keeper.
We could love like surgeons,
precise and unflinching,
stitching the gashes we've ignored for centuries.
We could drown the drumbeats of war
with a louder, wilder rhythm—
the pulse of hands rebuilding,
of bread shared,
of forgiveness so reckless
it startles the world into remembering its name.

All it takes is the courage
to open your eyes.

—MyKoul