Dutiful To Our Guns Poem by Harun Shukri

We are sons of guns
Once sons of men.
Now, dutiful to our guns
Our hearts is daubed with beautiful hatred
And ugly love
Our youthful years borrowed
To Mystic Voyage
From birth at dawn to death at dusk
Via life by midday

We are the slaying generation
An Estate
Hired to death
Planted with bullets
In slaying season
And graves harvested
In dying season

Each dawn awakes a new orange feeling
Shadowed by a wordless numbness at noon
Sunset usher's eventide's restlessness
As terror covers the darkness
Panic envelopes the night
Hearts hammering the chest
Pounding worryingly
Until the rapid rhythm of the heart beats
Matches the pace of the
Drumming Boots of the soldiers

Bang, bang! To eachdoor
Sightless sounds of commanding voices…
"Open up"
A pause…silent noises
Sounds of Gunshots…Ram! Pam! Pam!
Crack open the screaming orchestra
Of women and children
Everyone is guilty until proven innocent

Home is not a safe shade no more
Your own House betraying you
Growing Into a shadow
I wonder why the meat sings
In praise of the butcher
Horror commands the naked hours of midnight
As fear rules the remaining decades of hourstill dawn.