Laid At The Wrong Alter

We scroll.
We sip coffee.
We switch between apps and sitcoms,
as another hospital crumbles under the weight of
fire and fury.
Bombs fall like raindrops "
not on our rooftops
but on cradles, on storybooks,
on the innocent dreams of children who’ll never see another morning.
As if the blood doesn’t stain the very light we bask in,
as if the screams don't echo in our marrow.
The streets cry in silence,
but our ears are cushioned in comfort.

The murders
yet we sit, limbs lazy,
on soft couches spun from blind privilege,
watching movies where wars are fiction,
as the real ones write scripts in ash and shattered bones.
We smile while the world mourns
our joy flickers on screens
that know nothing of loss.

We don’t care not really.
Our laughter doesn’t falter,
even as children disappear beneath
like fallen stars swallowed by night.
Our popcorn crunches
as hearts are crushed under boots we will never see.

I want to write this truth
this ache,
this hypocrisy we wear like perfume.
We’re thinking of concerts,
dancing under strobes,
wearing glitter on skin
while the sky elsewhere rains fire,
not light.
posting selfies,
smiling, flawless, in sponsored outfits
they’ll cry if a script demands,
but silence when screams echo from Rafah,
from Gaza,
from Jenin,
from the bloodied soil of all forgotten lands.

Bombings burst like tears,
like rain too heavy for the clouds to hold,
but we speak of tickets,
and dress codes,
and what to wear
while others wonder
if they'll live to see the next moon.

Wonder is this new world order real?
Theories we dismissed as madness
now wear suits,
sign treaties with ink made of silence.

The conspiracies we mocked
were they truths in disguise?
Is this their unfolding?
And we fools of our own making?

Did we lose this much of humanity?
Have we really sunk so deep
that we cry only when headlines hit hard?
Do we shed tears only when the footage is high-resolution?
When the agony is cinematic?
When it looks like art
and not like real death?

We cry like we’re watching a drama unfold
but these are not actors.
These lines aren't scripted.
These wounds aren't told.
These are souls
not roles
and yet we forget them
like stories that sold.

Always on our phones
tapping, scrolling, liking, forgetting.
Our hands move,
but our hearts have gone still.
We don’t think not truly.
We don’t move.
We only hope
hope that the universe will fix what we refuse to touch.

But we don’t get it.
The stars wait in their silence above
for feet to rise, for hands to move.
The universe doesn’t stir,
until we do.
And we
we sit,
we sink,
we sleep,
still.

How many fathers have died
stepping into flames
for the ones they loved,
with only courage in their pockets?

How many mothers died
like the final leaf on a winter tree,
clinging to broken branches of hope,
before falling
soft, slow, silent
into the earth?

How many children have frozen forever,
not tags
but in that last blink
before everything became nothing.

How many poets
fell mid-verse,
their ink still trembling,
words rehearsed
but never heard,
nor ever read,
their metaphors
laid down for dead,
buds of meaning
never grown,
planted deep,
and left alone.

Oh! Look.
Everything is useless
because we are too doomed in us.
We are us-drunk
on ignorance, on pride,
on shiny screens and empty dreams.
And it takes a lifetime to sober up.

We are happy-masked
our joy painted on by brands,
by convenience,
by denial.
We go to shopping malls
to buy duplicates,
blind to the fact
that every dollar we waste
could've fill a childs plate.

We live like we are the only
the only ones who matter.
“They say so?”
“Who cares?”
"We don't live long"
And that’s our anthem.
Our lullaby.
Our final song.

Oh humanity,
where have you gone
You once made of stars and stories,
painted in pastels of prayer and fire,
spoke your soul in every breath,
your voice a rising choir.
Now
you are static,
you are pixels,
you are whispers
drowned beneath the noise,
a faded echo
in a world that forgets.

Colors once bled with meaning
now they fade into grey.
Red is not love.
It’s the blood dried on broken bricks.
Blue is not sky.
It’s the silence of eternal indifference.
White is not peace.
It’s the cloth tied around the eyes of those who chose
not to see.

Still we plan our next trip
to sweet Swiss dreams,
where grass is green,
and chocolates melt
but not the conscience.

Oh, home sweet home.
But home is gone.
Home is lost.
Home is a memory in exile.
A ghost of what once was.

Still we smile in photos,
still we pose,
while children die in piles too high to name.
Still we eat in gold-plated halls,
while others eat silence.

Kings of comfort sip wine beneath chandeliers of bone,
their forks gleam, untouched by grief.
Their hearts sterilized,
scrubbed raw with the soap of silence,
polished with ignorance
until even guilt won’t stick.
No blood on their linen,
no ashes in their breath
only laughter,
only light,
while the world burns just outside the feast.
Celebrities post from yachts,
covered in diamonds,
singing about heartbreak
while real hearts stop
in the middle of prayers.

And we
we, the fallen.
Not like leaves in wind,
but like stones in silence.
We are lost,
not wandering
buried.
We have fallen underground,
beneath the weight of our own worship.
Not truth,
not light,
not justice
but them.
False stars we chose to follow,
even as the sky
was set ablaze.
And heaven turned its face away

Oh humanity,
you are gone.
A ghost in the mirror,
a name no one calls.
And we
never searched.
Never lit a candle.
Never asked where you went.
We just moved on
And you were never real.