For Prompt #21 at NaPoWriMo – Erasure, and an inexplicably unsettling Ted Talk by the International Justice Mission’s Gary Haugen, even though this probably doesn’t count as an erasure poem. 

—
I’m not much of a crier-
In Rwanda tears just aren’t much help
Compassion – cum passio – mean(s) to suffer with
Up close to human suffering.

Your first introduction
Might have been We Are The World.
A mom from Zambia, three kids,
Widow, coals on the cooking fire
Completely cold, watch
Peter suffer, grow cold.

Where were you when
They were marching
Our Japanese-American neighbours
To internment camps, beating
Our African-American neighbours
Because they tried to vote?

I hope we can say we had compassion
Raised our voice, moved to make the violence stop.