Heat, Fire, Blood—all common sights to see.
Boom!
The monster has been released.
Storms of dust and dirt crowd up,
Swarming and crashing like two giant waves.
Battling over the throne of the Red Sea. They create an uproar of chaos.
On the beaten down roads,
Nothing is seen but blanched skulls and bones.
Walking across the cold streets of Lebanon,
My black shadow mirrors me, yet provides no comfort in this land of corpses.
For who knows, perhaps my shadow may even unleash a monster.
Even though I have known it all my life, trust has proven to be a privilege.
Everywhere I look there are traces of thick demise.
Dead bodies piled up ever so naturally,
Isn’t it the same as the autumn leaves’ annual death?
Or the ice beginning to show its teeth in the pond?
Or the heavy layers of lake water pushing against the innocent fish?
Indeed these phenomena occur, yet they do so naturally,
They occur with the permission of God,
Unlike the man-made monsters ripping through people,
Tearing limbs and burning faces so that others cannot recognize,
Cannot identify their only loved ones.
Which one is the face of my daughter?
Perhaps I will never know.
How did she feel when death approached her?
When the gruesome smoke choked her, forever barring her from the beauty of daylight.
Life has taken me on quite a journey, through tumbling waves of blood,
And hurricanes of ash with thick black smoke secretly killing my body,
And in the midst of this struggle, this jihad,
I see my wife in the black orchards,
Perhaps only an arm, or a leg is visible, a finger here and there.
Tears roll down my cheeks.
With good intentions they comfort my scorched skin,
But what a pity, they only provide a smoldering sensation.

The heat of the bombs slashes through my face.
Leaping fires crowd through my home.
The bodies evaporate like water on a piece of burning iron,
Yet there is not one warning of where the iron is to strike.
Blood is drained out of the sea of death leaving only an empty land of devastation.
The misery of loneliness fills my heart.
The thick silence after the monsters’ aftermath fills me with remorse.
The times have left when I ever felt elated.
Orchards of rubble grow by day,
If only flowers could blossom instead of these heaps.

Yet as a miracle of God, I hear the bird sing
The beautiful, lustful song of hope.
It sings with confidence, not with fear.
Boom!
The sweet sound of God’s creation is trampled upon and silenced forever
By none other than the ferocious monsters.
It is a machine that knows only to spit fire at those that see it with innocence.
I always thought that it was only the wretched and dishonest—
To be in the fire, sighing in a high and low tone.
But who knew it would be the wretched and dishonest,
Who reaped the protection from the monsters?
Boom!
Another bomb, another monster is unleashed.
Raging fires roar through the land.
A whirlpool of dust storms into a blazing rage.
Leaping hot winds look for another face to burn,
Another method to disengage a soul from a body.
Houses are decorated with ash and burnt pieces of human flesh.
Who could believe that mankind would ever try to emulate Mother Nature
And create thick, black, suffocating fog?
The fog of mankind serves as poison for the healthy mind.
Indeed, a sad technological advance.

I am not alone in this cold world, there are predators lurking around.
The wrath of the monster, certainly, is the greatest predator of all.
Over the course of my resentful journey I have learned the most important facts.
Man should not fight and bear hatred.
These humiliating emotions transform the world from its natural state
To that of pathetic chaos, one that we are trapped in today.
I walk around mankind’s greatest faults,
A sea of blood and human flesh tumults with great confidence.
But man should know that this confidence is the most dangerous of all.
Oh how I miss the harmony in the world like the sun misses the earth on a foggy day.
Yet the sun never ceases to kiss the earth at the break of dawn.
Perhaps that is why the sun’s kiss is always beautiful early in the day.
It is a sign of peace, for the sun has no animosity towards the terrain—
So why do humans accept such hatred and rage towards one another
When God’s greater creations cease to do so?
We must all come together, help one another,
Start with our neighbors and create amicable relations.
Otherwise we shall prepare ourselves to be victims,
For man will reflect upon himself and realize
That he will never cease to be the monsters’ prey.