For the Innocents

(I wrote this in 2022 at the time Russia started their attack on Ukraine).

Clear blue sky over a field of golden sunflowers
Crisp winter air on a sun-filled day
Like so many others wrapped in peace
A calm overtaken by a sense of dread

The little bald man decides to advance
Staging his forces with the goal of obliteration
Hiding the truth from his soldiers
Hiding the truth from his people

The criminal mind gives the command
The convoys move forward, artillery aimed
Planes begin takeoffs, tanks begin rolling
As the little bald man starts playing his game

But the brave lion leader defiantly resists
Encouraging his people to take up their arms
To defend their families, to lie in ambush
Awaiting their fate while repelling their foes

And steel pours in sheets from the sky
Rubble and smoke, fire and calamity
Buildings collapse and streets become craters
The reaper works overtime hunting for souls

While the parade heading westward
Babies in arms, mothers distraught
Leaving their husbands, their fathers, their brothers
To defend their land from the little bald man.

There will be nothing left but pock-marked fields
Unburied bodies from both sides in the holes
Twisted metal, vehicle corpses
That just litter the sides of the roads

Lakes of blood and fractured bones
Of villains and heroes and innocents
Nostrils will flare at the burning aroma
Of death hovering on air

And when it is all over, no bird will sing again
No blade of grass will search for sun
No leaf will bud in spring
The little bald man will own a desert

Some day in the future, the children will hear
The stories of survivors and the horrors of war
And they will realize that all was taken
By the cowardly little bald man

Rage will fill their hearts, and the search will be on
For revenge on the bald one for the lives they have lost
And the world will come searching and eventually find him
The little bald man will be no more

No burial for him, just food for the vultures
That will die from the poison in that man without soul
Grind him away and then leave no memorial
The little bald man shall be remembered no more.