From thoughts into words

I came To seek Refuge in words. Alone, I stand marooned in the emptiness of nowhere. With words come color, resolution and momentary joy When my hand brushes against the tail-end of a fleeting memory, just before it flutters away into he blue sky. I speak of them, of their memories. They asked me to remember them when I came back, Not to forget their names, faces or stories. I remember The sadness and sweetness mingled in the pictures that leant against his wall. The soft colors spoke of his dreams and memories Before he crossed over to that new place. He'd thought he was moving on to bigger and better Things. Yet there he was in another nation, But still on the same side of the railway track. And another. A traveller and story-teller Looking for a way out. Sadness in his eyes And memories of the cyclical violence. Two brothers Dearly missed. This poem is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License . Please feel f...

I recently saw a picture in a daily- a picture of a bulldozer crushing structures in a shantytown somewhere on the outskirts of an African city. The caption described the scene as an ongoing project in the "beautification" of the city. "Beautification"?! I realize that our culture is obsessed with euphemisms, but this particular use is pushing it too far? The theory behind the beautification project is probably that the poor slum dwellers make the city ugly and aesthetically unpleasing. Apparently, the city planners' and policymakers' solution to this urban "eyesore" is to evict the slum dwellers and force them out of the city, pull their structures down and burn whatever remains to ashes. It's a common enough occurence in our cities, so common that the use of he word "beautification" no longer raises eyebrows. Particularly disturbing in this instance is the fact that the human story is lost. Does anyone wonder what happens to these p...