I Almost Cried Aloud

Right now

There's an earthquake in Haiti

Registering 7.0 on the Richter scale

Nearly a hundred-thousand people are said to be dead

Three million more injured or homeless

That's a third of that nation’s population

No one should have to bear so much pain

Right now

The United States is colonizing Iraq and Afghanistan

They say we’re the good guys--fighting a war on terror

But we all know it's just a land grab…give us the goddamn oil already

More than a million Middle-Easterners are dead because of this

Though we don’t officially count the bodies of Arabs

Because in truth, as a nation, we really don’t care

Right now

More than 500 mountain tops have been blown apart with dynamite

Done to extract valuable coal

Which is then burned to heat our homes

But coal is toxic

Making Appalachian streams waxy and black with ash

Filling the air with lung-clogging smog

Right now

My heart is heavy with sorrow

Because a little bird died today

Out walking, I discovered its body on the side of the road.

I buried it in a tiny grave, dug beneath the pine trees near my house

And placed a pine cone for its headstone, as I hummed a solemn song

My eyes welled with tears and I almost cried aloud

For the bird, for myself...for the world.

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I Almost Cried Aloud

by Max Eternity

15 January 2010

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