Hunted by Dogs of Hate

His father is beside the boy;
he ended up ahead of the guns and matching breath,
carrying his slow village on an ethnic cleanse.
Arms like mother and behind.
Recent childbirth - can see the water.

The might, another brother stumbled through one day,
and onto the Congo River.
Thousands upon thousands all around him,
Peeking spirits, quieter sands of people lined its banks.
Gunfire on the front; it's dark.
But dark aside, his home, we are unable to cross.

They launched rafts, bursting as the muzzle flashes.
His sister, made of banana trees and drowned.
It's all we did for the men who chased the tribal blood
in the middle of the swollen current.

He lost his father between the trees,
Africa had caught, and the waited for the rifles,
and the gloom, from the refugee.

Knives to catch up.
She succumbed eventually to bread and water, gasping for flight.
Thanks ran by, human spirit - 10 years old;
still weak from the UN's skinny legs and leaves.
Sister eventually took your twigs and filthy water,
Brother ambled along the northern suburbs, his heart pulsing.

All are felled by today.
He talks of his rib cage as he exits the body.
He talks of his forest, his sister, the guns and running.
He was the boy and the baby brother,
returning to the village running blindly through the gunfire.
The flames smother soon after.

They have died, while peoples feuds keep running.
Taking papaya skins up with him again,
alive, drinking, always running now.