Look, World

Perhaps an evil waiting in the streets

Inhabiting this city known for sin

Chose the hour when the storm came in

To flood the alleyways and dark retreats,

Its beastly covenants of lawlessness

Enact among the animal types that prey

Upon the weak who in their helplessness

They maim and rape and violently slay.

The world condemns and hears the plaintive cries,

Powerless or callously it waits

While the violence and hate of centuries

Unleashed on the downtrodden masses sates.

But look, world, peer into your heart

And see the darkness resident within

Know that every soul is also kin

And no one, even the purest, lives apart.

We are confounded by the magnitude

Of greed for power, lust of fallen souls

And in this air consume our daily food.

We are the ones for whom the bell tolls.

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Written after reading of the terrible injustices to our fellow humans following the devastation in New Orleans.