Speechless Poem by Bill Munn

I do not have the words.
I need a language to make executives and politicians
feel the pain of lives destroyed, the tragedy of the dead
and maimed, the hopelessness of children
surviving in the hell that is the
“collateral damage” of unholy wars

I need phrases stronger than I know.
Phrases that can make the terror stalking the streets
of Iraq or Afghanistan or Rwanda real in the minds
of leaders grown immune to the sorrow of lives wasted,
destroyed by the waging of their
'just' wars and 'tough' decisions.

I cannot find the words I need
to give voice to the screams inside my head.
There is no alphabet to give form to
the desperate sadness and fear I feel
when scanning the pages of the Times or the Post or
watching atrocities march across my TV screen.

I need to express the hopelessness
in the eyes of a child, or the pain of a woman searching for family
in the rubble and ruin that once was home,
or the horror of mangled bodies and frightened families fleeing
their now to a an unknown fate,
that may be worse than the their today.

And I search for words
terrible enough to describe the camps where thousands
are caught caught in the maelstrom of a war they did not make
and cannot understand go on existing;
living on memories and the forlorn hope
that tomorrow there will be enough to eat.

I want to counter priests and politicians and all men
who shout that this war is just, or needed, or will bring 'freedom'
to people whose only wish is deliverance
from the devastation that has become their life.
But my muse deserts me and description dies in tears
I do not have the words.