We live in a world that feels like it’s cracking under the weight of its own reflection.
As of 2025, humanitarian crises and genocides continue across the globe, largely ignored or exploited by the same systems that profit from their pain. In Gaza, tens of thousands have been killed and displaced as infrastructure collapses and access to aid remains restricted. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the cobalt and coltan mined by children still power the batteries of our phones, laptops, and electric cars. And in Sudan, an ongoing civil war has displaced millions, yet receives almost no media coverage compared to Western conflicts.
Meanwhile, Americans scroll and spend, buried under debt, inflation, and propaganda. While, being told that freedom can be found in the checkout aisle or the next algorithmic distraction comes along.
This poem was written as both confession and confrontation: a moment of truth-telling from within the belly of a capitalist empire that feeds on silence.
Poem:
“The World Burns, and We Scroll”
I wake beneath the hum
of screens,
each one a sermon preaching more for sale,
their glow a ghost of what we lost…
to comfort,
convenience,
and compliance.
The world burns,
not metaphor,
not news,
she just burns.
In Congo,
in Sudan,
in Palestine,
children trade their breath for minerals.
Their parents’ lives
for borders drawn by hands
that never had to bleed.
Their cries travel
through copper veins
to light our phones, our news feeds,
our many, many screens.
The guilt, we share.
We spend.
We pretend.
America,
land of the barely living wage,
where grief is taxed,
and outrage costs extra.
We chant freedom in discount aisles
while bombs hum lullabies abroad,
and children go to bed with dread
fed by hunger.
You’ve got to start to
wonder.
We are not free.
We are stitched into these machines,
screaming between algorithms.
We need only to bear witness,
to cradle a world that keeps unraveling,
to tell everyone still fighting:
we see you.
Even if our country won’t.
May every dollar dripped in blood
rot back to dirt.
May every empire collapse
under its own reflection of depravity.
May mercy outlive profit.
May love…
unfiltered, defiant, unbranded,
outlast the hands that sell it.
And may God hope He isn’t real
after what He’s let these children
feel.
The violence unfolding in Palestine, Congo, and Sudan is not distant. It is wired directly into our daily lives. It is in our consumption, our comfort, our denial. Every tap, every scroll, every “neutral” stance allows empires to continue unchallenged. Bearing witness means refusing silence. It means calling it what it is: systemic greed, colonialism reborn, a global machine powered by both apathy and profit.
But awareness can still become action. Sharing verified updates, supporting on-the-ground organizations like Doctors Without Borders, UNRWA, Refugees International, and Congo Relief Missions, or simply breaking the silence in our own communities. Each and every act chips away at the narrative that tells us we are helpless.
Art alone cannot stop war, but it can refuse to let it vanish unseen.
This poem stands as both lament and rebellion… against complicity, against erasure, and against the idea that humanity can be priced.
Poet’s Note:
I wrote this piece as an American who has grown exhausted by the repetition of history. We are watching the same injustices dressed in new slogans. We are taught to chase comfort while others are buried beneath it. This poem is not just grief; it’s a refusal to look away.
If you read this and feel angry, good. That means you still have something the system hasn’t stolen, your empathy. Hold on to it. Use it. STAY WOKE!
Because the world is burning, and still, somehow, we have the power to bear witness, to refuse to forget, and to keep telling the truth.
