The Faceless

No shoes, no clothes, no food to eat
Men, women, children begging in the street
Look in their faces, look at their tears
Oppression’s the equation for the pain they’ve felt for years
Picking garbage and living in shantytowns
Is not their preferred way of life
It’s what they have to do to survive another day
Through poverty, famine and the stench of their stife
With pains of hunger in their bellies each day
And their ears to the ground while they listen and pray
Hoping that off in the distance, the machines will go away
But the earth starts to shake as the rumble draws near
They grab what they can and scramble with fear
A cloud of dust appears up ahead
Behind it lies calm, quiet, dead
Their house are crushed, made of cardboard and wood
They’re left with nothing, they grabbed what they could
Some stand in the distance, crying, watching in shock
As the soldiers count the bodies, as if taking stock of
all the hopes and dreams that were never had
and with each body counted the soldiers seem glad
then the troops move out as quickly as they’d come
The little shantytown is no more and the faceless are on the run
The smell of death is everywhere
But no one else seems to care
Life rolls backward into this bad dream
And as death beckons in the new dawn
The faceless are no longer seen.