ten thousand children are dead

An old tv screen
Screams channel 3
Interpreting the universe 
Incorrectly
Tools too old for
Utility
Too young for
Translation
The voice of thunder
Murmured as a buzz
Direct line to 
Ancestral energy contorted through
A prism
Coming out fog
Wrong 
My chest is made of static
It screams
Through a din
Over ten thousand children

I can hear their screams as I’m trying to sleep.
This haunting is malattributed.
Mass murdering, serial killing, child-slaugtering, Genocidaires.

I want those kids to grow up to be shitty adults 
I don’t get along with.
I want them to be five and jump rope. 
I want them to be nine and fall off their bike.
I want them to be sixteen and find infinite embarrassment in the innocuous act of being 
Alive.
And a teenager.

I want them to consider their lives, and change majors and drop out. 
I want them to choose hysterectomies and adopt and abort.
I want false starts and failed dreams and half-baked plans and regrettable tattoos.
I want them to grow up.

How dare you weaponize my sexuality against my basic sense of morality. 
I’m acquainted with this indelicate subtext bolded in italics: You would be killed too.

I probably would be.
Soldiers would have shot me by now.