The Innocent Ones

Perhaps there is another poppy...

a poppy for children.

For those without a voice, lost in wars they never chose.

Numbers and stats, cold, bureaucratic, black ink against white paper, hiding red blood.

Children’s blood.

Gaza, Syria, another place, another name— faceless cities, broken by faceless men in dark suits, with darker deals.

War is a business. War is a business.

It devours innocence, with contracts signed and bombs blessed, ink and blood in the same breath.

Arms, machines, numbers. A fair of weapons— fair?

And leaders, men with their names etched into steel, Zelenskyy, another name, signing bombs like postcards— a promise of nothing but loss.

Cold signatures, pressing down on paper, on lives. Power is profit. Peace is pennies.

The war machine spins, relentless, hungry, blind to tears and terror.

In the fields, the poppies grow—white, purple, black, and red.

Each one a symbol, a memory, a promise— but the little ones, the little ones have no poppy.

Where is their colour? Their symbol of innocence, of lives broken before they began.

The white poppy whispers peace, yet stained with the blood of the young.

Perhaps, for the children lost, there is no symbol, only silence, a silence that cries louder than words.

For the greedy are deaf, their hearts hardened with profit. They drink their justifications, drunk on power and empty promises.

But the blood of the innocent bleeds in every poppy.