SALAM for the Children of the World

Rasaq Malik Gbolahan, a Nigerian Poet, has honored me by writing two poems for the children of the world and the MY WORLD PROJECT. Please listen to the words and visit the Facebook page and maybe together we can find a way to bring this project to more children around the world.

SALAM (I)

Salam, they say
whenever a bomb blazes in the sky,
in the streets, in the eyes of a girl
who sleeps in a room filled with the screams
of her mother, filled with terror moving like
wind. Salam, they say whenever houses
become morgues for those who search
for the corpses of their relatives, those
who count the number of corpses left
unclaimed, unburied, opened like a
bud to the sun. Salam, they say whenever
grief gnashes their hearts, whenever fear
dims their eyes, whenever bullets sculpt
holes in the portraits hanging on desolate
walls, whenever they assemble to mourn
those who rot in the dark, those whose
countries become dust. Salam, they say
whenever a woman cradles the corpse
of her only son, whenever blood splatters
on the face of a boy in Nigeria, Iraq, in Paris
in Burundi, in Yemen, in Bangladesh.

SALAM (II)

Every day they search for light
in the remains of their countries.
in the bodies wrapped with rags
disposed like waste, ferried to where
their relatives ask how and why a body
becomes an object, a mere name, another
synonym for trash, a symbol of how war
litters the earth with wrecks. Every day
they walk the streets to where a boy carries
a placard that bears the names of his parents,
his elder sisters–raped, battered, left to bleed
to death. Every day the world fades into the darkness
that war births, in the turbulence of missiles, in the
sound of a bullet that leads them to where blood clots
dust, to where silence tunes their ears to the cries
of people dying in far away countries. Every day
they remember their dead beloveds, their families
at refugee camps, people buried beneath stones,
covered with leaves. Every day they say, Salam.