deaf dumb blind numb afraid.

And my tears
Have been spread too thin

To speak the truth
I am just exhausted

There is no grief in me, anymore;
I see corpses the same way I see
Shoes lined up at my front door

When I was three
After bedtime;
I remember smoke on the television screen

My parents told me to go to sleep,
It wasn't real;
But I had nightmares for a week.

When I was five
The only difference was the time of day
And my mother was crying

And she didn't tell me the name of the film

(All the world's a stage,
I died a thousand times in theatres
In beds and on tables;
I hardly know what it is anymore)

You lived in a world of Iron Curtains
But no explosions;
I was five when civilization fell
And the smoke has yet to clear

I have never had the chance to feel it;
I was a child when the world blew up around me
And now, I think, I am deaf

I don't think they understand how numb we are
Us children who have grown up in the shadows of explosions

Terror, to us, is just a marketing ploy.
I know, somewhere, out of sight
There is a director with a furrowed brow
Who is yet to say 'Cut';
Waiting like a sniper for the perfect shot

When I was sixteen I went to my first bar
35 miles from hell;

Do not think I am a stranger to the world
Making a mockery of the suffering of my people;
I almost think I did it myself

I think I must have a hollow heart
To match the hollow ring in my ear
(twenty fucking years)

I have never been to Never Go There
I can only imagine the stench of death
And, to be fair;
I lack the imagination

I lived 35 miles from hell and couldn't feel the heat

But I have walked the streets of the City of Lights
And to have been there, done that
And watch it go up in flames;

There is true horror in that.
I'm sorry that this is the thing that is,
For me,
The closest to home.

But the one face I remember in the Paris blur
Was a black girl working in the bakery
I remember the pretty scarf she had wrapped around her head

I remember she smiled at me, years before today
I hope she is okay.