CANVAS BAG

What have you seen is not for my eyes
Just an excuse for peace to turn out to be a lie
You were not alive but you hold the memories inside
Taken along for the change of lives

Canvas bag
Woven in you is the pain of history
Canvas bag
Mud or sand carried to many lands
Canvas bag
A companion no one understands

Learning to forget but desiring to remember
As the mind navigating the rapids of a river
Celebrated and degraded in the same breath
Memorialized the living death

Canvas bag
Woven threads now called home
Canvas bag
No hero's welcome only to be left alone
Canvas bag
Promises made to one day forget

Everything is forgotten in you
Filled with political promises never to come true
Carried on the back of an innocent man
Wondering what is the master plan

Canvas bag
Woven survivor faded green the nightmares you have seen
Canvas bag
Forgotten in a closet but your memories in the minds of lost lives
Canvas bag
Your journey is filled with unanswered questions why but defined as freedom




©Copyright Thomas Dooley 2017

ANOTHER ALEPPO CHILD

Aleppo Child
Why don't you cry?
Is it because you finished crying at your birth
Now you wonder what it was worth

Aleppo Child
Why don't you cry?
Are your emotions like stone
Even when there is little you know

Aleppo Child
Why don't you cry?
Is it because of the blood on your face
Is it all you have to wash the dust away

Aleppo Child
Why don't you cry?
You feel this is a dream
Soon your mother and father will wake you up
But you find them in forever sleep

Aleppo Child
Why don't you cry?
Where your tears drained away
To fill al-Assad's pool
To wash away his guilt only to put on a suite of a fool

©Copyright Thomas Dooley 2016

ALEPPO CHILD

One man wants to control it all
The money, the land, the beat of your own heart
He will take it all away in one day
Make so much pain God won't hear you pray

Aleppo child why don't you cry
Maybe it's better you don't
This pile of stone was once your home
Why cry when you're alone
Covered in dust with no one to trust

What can I say living miles away
With my nation's lies will I understand why
Everyday living like its night
In your, country another person dies in a fraction of a second

Aleppo child why don't you cry
Because you don't know how so why even try
Or do your tears fill the capital's fountain
Just so Asad can take a swim in
Just to wash away the blood of your mom and dad

Nothing grows in the ruins of war
A wasteland becomes the only achievement of man
Can't create peace from war like you can get blood from a turnip
If you could the many lives it would save

Aleppo child why don't you cry
Living in the eternal night

©Copyright Thomas Dooley 2016