WAR-FRONT PROPERTY // KEVIN SHORTFUSE

The fear, it grips these tendons
Blood runs cold within these veins
I look out on a damaged world
As I begin my day

I cannot shake this worry
As my children all awake
To the rat-tat-tat of gunfire
From a distance not so great

An echo of community
Binds the few of us who stayed
The ones with no place left to go
Or the means to get away

The choice was never mine to make
But I don’t want to live this way
The shelling continues through the night
And again all through the day

This is the world today
A quarter turn of Earth away
Under the same sky built
From a patchwork of gray

A life most will never see
Strength, endurance, and tenacity
Are required terms to get a lease
For living in a war-front property

Meanwhile
Safety seems so far away
But it’s at safe distance that
Bureaucratic choices are made

It seems ignorance is their defense
Protracted by them at our expense
Life is a knife and it cuts both ways
Deep down I wonder if it’ll ever change

This is the world today
A quarter turn of Earth away
Under the same sky built
From a patchwork of gray

A life most will never see
Strength, endurance, and tenacity
Are the required terms to get a lease
For living in a war-front property