Toll-Taking
Death at UCLA, teacher
And then shooter, then
Spouse found, murdered
Before
Death-number increases
Of soldiers lost to flood
At Fort Hood in Texas
Migrants’ lives lost
Beyond counting, since
Too many die unknown
In Mediterranean waters
Or on western Asian
Battlefields
Nigerian school children
Lives erased, such is the
The plan of those who
Took them
And these are in the
Process of becoming old
Well-worn news, such is
Our way
Though beyond blame
Is the stress of bearing
Our world, a planet of
Dying
And of sorrow
Atlas shrugged, the novel
Claims? Atlas should
Have wept
Charon demands gold
For passage, though the
Real currency is life
clcouch123 
June 6, 2016 at 3:47 am
oh. oh my. i can;’t help but just *sigh*. 😦
June 7, 2016 at 12:19 am
Thank you, Rosema, for that couplet response. The rhyme is frosting on the cake.
June 7, 2016 at 2:00 am
Oh geez. I don’t see it as a couplet! 😀 and the rhyme is unintended. 😉
June 7, 2016 at 2:14 am
I think unintended rhyme is pretty cool. And yours made a couplet in my head. But I am “a bear of little brain.”
June 6, 2016 at 5:29 am
Christopher..
I don’t know what will become of our world if we kill education.. 😦
June 7, 2016 at 12:21 am
Well, if we kill it, our nature to learn would go unattended. I learn, there I think, therefore I am. Are we something like that? Thank you for the just adjuring, Dajeena.
June 7, 2016 at 3:35 am
The real currency is life! It’s so weakening to watch the news and hear these things each day, that sometimes the only thought that goes through my mind is ‘where next, who next.’ Not a good way of life, this toll is too high.
June 7, 2016 at 11:42 am
Knowing each life is valuable is a practical truth to me as well as good. Loss of life leaves a hole in us, though I know spiritually all will be well. I agree, though, about “who next.” While watching the local news last night, I began counting who had been killed in my area alone. I gave up counting. Too much, too many.