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Child Soldiers
By Gary Beck

Children of the AK-47
your brief lives will be ended,
as soon as your cartridges
have been expended.

Unlike warriors of old
who trained in the ways of war,
children soldiers pick up their guns
younger than ever before.

The nurturing machine gun sings
the only soothing lullaby
that urchin armies ever hear
in their last moments as they die.

When children's bones are bleaching white
in the skeleton dance of time,
adults who made these infants kill
were the true authors of the crime.

Their stunted bodies line the road,
victims of the endless strife,
kissed goodbye by the bullet,
that ends their futile life.

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