when a child speaks
what makes her words
so dangerous
you would gag her
with lead?
what code of honor
that is spoken or written
exists for women
or their children
in this place
where girls are burned
by acid
for going to school;
where learning
is criminal,
where book bags are hidden
like contraband,
a dangerous heroin
of minds flowering
into thought
yes, Malala was taught
& Malala wrote
of beatings & bodies
hung along the streets;
the bitter fruit
of the swat valley
an angry truth
pressed into wine
poured out into ether
instead of staining earth
but to speak
for the voiceless
& against the machine
that crushes them
leads to more
than balance
& peace prizes
targeted & hit, Malala
pays with blood
but not necessarily
her life, a 14-year-old girl
such a frail enemy
drugged & swollen to silence
i pray she lives
& that that spirit
pacing & caged
too large for her child’s mind
was not cut away
with the bullet they took
from her brain
Susan Daniels Poetry 
It’s things such as this which threaten to break the fragile hope I try and hold that we are redeemable. This poem is a magnificent tribute to the tragedy.
ROS
Thank you, ROS. I am so tired of writing these, but I can’t stop. The injustice of it stuns and saddens.
I know what you mean. I want to write more poetry of celebration, but I see hurt everywhere and react…
It reminds me of a talk I had with my Buddhist chap. It’s all very well knowing this [Buddhist thought], but how can we live it out there?! How do you live sanely in a mad world?
You can only try, he said.
Indeed.
I think, perhaps, part of that trying is naming brutality and insanity for what they are, and somehow not being dragged into the very things we despise.
*tears*
You expressed how I feel.
Nelle, I know. This is heartbreaking. I just wish our children did not have to put themselves on the line like this. I have so much respect for this young girl. God, I hope she makes it.
Yes, to her recovery. And to honour, more than us, I hope those around her rally to her vision.
The pigs hide behind honour and tradition and custom and ritual, as though that makes them anything less than evil. They are filth who would do things like this, and to children no less. These are the things that make the world truly dark.
Yes, yes they are. Bastards, all of them.
What else can be said?
exactly. so fed up with this stuff, Boomie.
very very sad! the crimes that are committed in the name of culture!
It is sad. This poor little girl.
Hear! Here!
Thanks! I hear she is moving hospitals soon, if not already.
I think those who aimed and shot compartmentalized their actions thinking that it’s not their child and if they are willing to do to one’s else child, I wonder what they do to their own children. It’s one thing to consider another man as a threat, but to shoot at a child as you shoot to eliminate a threat, that’s a level of barbarism unheard of.
Not do I hope for her recovery, but I hope whoever decided to shoot be made an example of what not to do.
Joe–I hope they catch that man too, and that he be made an example of, as you have said. What mindset sees a child as a threat to be eliminated? Makes me sick, so sick.
yeah pure evil
A wonderful tribute, Susan. The poor child. My prayers are with her.
Thanks, C. Mine too…