Poem: It Was Just a Regular Day

by Ben Millard

It was just a regular day

In Syria where

Children played in the street

And a bomb fell out of the air.

It was not the only day

Where Death brandished his scythe.

For seven years rebels struggled

Against Assad’s sharp knife.

The civil war that rages on,

The corruption and the savagery,

The bombs that keep raining down,

Fuelled by hatred and gravity.

When the children gazed at the sun,

They heard the whip of blades,

Where the sun should have been

Was a helicopter’s heat haze.

Without a merciful warning,

No sympathy at all,

The chopper’s belly opened up;

The bomb began to fall.

It crashed to the floor in Douma,

Gas seeped out from its pores.

Men, women and children were dying,

Banshees were wailing from doors.

But as if it never happened,

Just as if nobody died,

Russia is calling it fake news,

But it was a war crime.