Toy Soldier

Send me your children
Line them on city streets
Dusted impish faces
Too young to be scared
Lay them in shallow graves
Pray with their mothers
Cheat decency
Forget leniency
Herding cattle into battle
Scarred faces
Charred remains
Echoed waves of gunfire
Densely-fill the coal black night
False comfort in shadows
In numbers are huddled
Follow the leader
Buckshots scream like thunder
In sordid night skies
Mamas hold your babies
Close to breast as they cry
Weep for lost freedoms
Innocence of days gone by
Raggedy Andy playing soldier
Let us lay them down to sleep
Ravaged surface feeding fate
Suffer the sheep
Mourn the new dawn
Pelted by her mocking light
Fiercely played in battle grave
This game of capture the flag

***

Like