{"id":94761,"date":"2017-07-03T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2017-07-03T11:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=94761"},"modified":"2017-06-30T12:57:15","modified_gmt":"2017-06-30T11:57:15","slug":"city-of-broken-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/07\/city-of-broken-dreams\/","title":{"rendered":"City of Broken Dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Shadows of wings fall on the streets of Aleppo.<br \/>\nA shower of metal explode in brains, shred arms and legs.<br \/>\nSevered limbs are clogging the drains of Aleppo.<br \/>\nA hail of bullets rupture the walls.<\/p>\n<p>The domes of mosques are pockmarked forever.<br \/>\nThe stench of rotting corpses rises from the dust<br \/>\nand forms a cloud of doom over memories which<br \/>\nwill never come again in this land of olives and figs<br \/>\nand goats and sheep where ancient rivers met<br \/>\nto form a Garden of Eden.<\/p>\n<p>There is no hope for the prisoners of Aleppo.<br \/>\nBarrel bombs erupt in fire.\u00a0 Children are dragging<br \/>\ntheir toys from the flames.\u00a0 Summer heat is turning<br \/>\nblood to stain upon the regime.<\/p>\n<p>The hungry shed their cocoons of skin.<br \/>\nMaggots and flies eat the eyes of the dead.<\/p>\n<p>Shattered glass blind those who see.<br \/>\nToddlers fly out of windows<br \/>\ntrapped in a coffin of rubble.<br \/>\nPoisoned babies cannot breathe.<br \/>\nA swath of shrapnel lodge into spines<br \/>\nand disable a man forever.<br \/>\nHe will never again sire a child<br \/>\nor know the height of pleasure.<br \/>\nThe heart of Aleppo is swollen with grief.<br \/>\nA city of bones lay beneath stones.<br \/>\nCity of graves, city of ghosts who remember<br \/>\nthe silence of the last breath.<br \/>\nThere is no victory but peace.<br \/>\nThe tears of martyrs are falling from heaven.<br \/>\nAn army of refugees march to the sea<br \/>\npinning their hopes to the horizon.<br \/>\n_________________________________________<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/barbara-millar.jpeg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-94762\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/barbara-millar.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"64\" height=\"64\" \/><\/a><em>Barbara Millar has been a poet anti-war activist since the Vietnam War era while attending the University of Florida in the mid-sixties. She taught history and language arts in Florida and in Northern California, has been a freelance writer for newspapers and magazines, and holds Masters degrees in American Literature and Clinical Psychology.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shadows of wings fall on the streets of Aleppo.<br \/>\nA shower of metal explode in brains, shred arms and legs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}