You cannot tell me

Tales of anything

I have not seen

Victims readily supplied

For casual sacrifice

Mothers and children

Alight, like torches

And the guards are screaming

So many horrors

As the frozen corpses

Mutilate the landscape

Rip a dying man's jaw off

To claim a single gold tooth

Half-faces

I half-recognise

And the smoke subdues it all

And the children

Leaping onto funeral pyres

To get warm

Haunt my waking dreams.

Abortions of hope

Are always everywhere.