Burmese Tears

I could never list the atrocities
the burns
the injustices
the lives held in secret
the years of education erased
of 12 years of medicine
of 8 years of high mathematics
engineering
20 years of astrophysics
the pleasure
the joie de vivre
gone

destroyed

cleaved with a machete
wiped off the planet
dissolved as a lobotomy
a rape of humanity’s light.

Myanmar
slayer of values
of knowledge, of dignity
of soul
heads on posts
brain left to stink and putrefy.

There are new elections
this is new hope.
a chance that sanity
not inhumanity prevails.