When Death Plays In The Streets

Prisoners in their own homes the children peep through half-shut windows "Don't go out, " "It's not safe, " father and mother trail off through the stuck-in-time feel of the day The somber street wears black as if in mourning, for the dead The darkened sky adds to the gloom Earth rumbles, setting off an indefinite season of doom What's it like to live in a place where the sun plays peek-a-boo And hell breaks loose without warning The flames rise higher than the roofs of the bullet-riddled homes Caught up in the heat and the frost that burns and bites without discrimination Fewer are the faces, still fewer are the smiles The roads are lonely as a hermit's hide The fight erupted and swallowed them all Scarred lives, ashen faces Nothing remains but moaning mouths Man gives up, lets death play in the streets, to his delight and shame