Cruelty thy name is Man
How shall we hold our heads high,
How shall we lookup at the sky,
What will we say when asked from Above
Where we cannot obfuscate and lie,

Abhorrent the greed and lust
Crushing is the power of wealth
Naked, beyond the bare  intentions,
Camaraderie, and fellowship in tatters,
Simple, honest,  living 
Sadly, given the go by.Go by.

The world a battlefield 
Poor and innocent, men, women and children
Sacrificed in order to, ostensibly, reign in War
Establish Peace,
How much more ironical can it get?
Paradox, A Conundrum !

Boats capsized, seas strewn with carcasses
Waters reverberate the screams of the millions
So submerged,

Lives extinguished without the batting of an eyelid ,
Lip sympathy the new language of choice,
Horrendous images, graphically, portrayed, 
To discourage those rising against
The plain atrocities perpetrated
By those with  power to commit them
And, then walk away glibly
With a jargon incomprehensible
To the vast majority of Mankind.

Billions spent on Arms and Warfare
A strange deterrent when it does not seem to deter
Anyone or anything,
This planet not enough for the designs of some,...
Gloating over trips to other planets, other stars
While billions starve and die on
Mother Earth,
A trul, saddened, Mother, indeed.

The Jungle boasts of  greater co-existence than    
what we humans show,
How then do we pat  ourselves on our backs
With nothing but  the fake ornamental glow.
Head held high or crying in shame?
Mankind’s strange dilemma,
Today.

(The author is a prolific poet who has over 30 poetry books to his credit. He can be reached at ashoksawhny06@gmail.com/ www.ashoksawhny.com)