The Kingdom Under the Bush

Five years have passed
and still our children are dying.
My own children spend all night
counting the three hundred billion
Caesar threw with the hopes of appeasing the mighty Mars--

a retaliation that reaches
to a small village in the Philippines
where a straw hut smolders
and a woman cries (over her limp child)
to Allah,
"Why?"

--the sand and sun beat
on those men and women,
worker ants, fulfilling statistical analyses,
remembered only when they are gone,
------------and only by their mothers--

a young man with dreams of reaching captain,
Nathan Perry, caught it a crossfire,
the only one of his group to walk away.
No purple heart for him today

--but Caesar snorts
and signs away more billions,
more for my children to count
with their papercut and raw fingers,
while our old receive less and less every month
and the ants march on
to the tune of a silent scream
from an unborn child.

The 'most prosperous of nations'
writhes in pain
from a thousand overlooked issues,
instead looking over its borders
in the hopes of fixing others' problems.
With millions on the streets
and too many going hungry,

Caesar ignores his kingdom,
leaving his smile on a blue screen and his mind in a desert
while rats and disease rampage the streets,
and the ants march on.