A detective contemplates a corpse
stabbed so many times that
he concludes – this was personal
so I am called an evil terrorist
as if the zombies in a
first person shoot-’em up
were suddenly weighted to win
I don’t want to witness my crime
by seeing the enemy as people
so I remember my X-box
shooting down Nazis
whose Holocaust
ironically
helped justify
our Palestinian “displacement”
between the bullets and the bombs
I press the button
which drops the bomb
but I don’t see the blast blossom
the seven stories pancake down
all in my rearview mirror
I don’t even see the confirmation
back at base – nothing to learn
about smart bombs
and our TV does not show
the dead children
or traumatised living
amongst the rubble
an angel of death
my hands are clean
only the world seeing
the blood dripping from them
between the bullets and the bombs
I am an old woman
whose heart has just given out
on the refugee road to elsewhere
surrounded, shelled
we took the only road they left open
my children will go to Kuwait
via camps in Lebanon
where they will be displaced
again by Saddam Hussain
and die in England
they will call this The Disaster
but my great-grandchildren
will have a good life
far from the bullets and the bombs
I am an old woman from Poland
I escaped the Holocaust
of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals
and the less-than-perfect of mind or body
only to find myself taken
to another prison camp
where the Jews are outside the wire
my husband and I helped the inmates
driving them to hospital
and I learned their language
so they have scheduled me for early release
and I will not die
between the bullets and the bombs
I am a baby who died
as the grossest provocation
the loudest shout-out
to a world that has long since
stopped listening and covered its eyes
whilst I am a baby crushed
into my mother’s breast
my grave a concrete sandwich
but we two babies
separated by bullets and bombs
whose ancestors lived here
side by side in peace
for millennia
if tested genetically
cannot be told apart
brothers and sisters under the skin…
Written for Poetics: Why war? over at dVerse Poets Pub Posted by paeansunplugged
Excellent, Andrew.
There must be so much pain throughout the country it does not bear thinking about, but unfortunately it needs everyone everywhere to do just that. Our personal sympathies to you my friend…
What a strong voice against war, all those victims and all the sorrow turning into hatred will be enough to feed war for another millenium.
The huge gamble was that this shock tactic and the guaranteed response, would finally turn the world’s thinking around and everyone could get behind a two-state solution and just because Israel says Hamas is not interested in that doesn’t make it true so there is a tiny hope, as insignificant as the hope left in Pandora’s box, that there might be an outcome different from the one you suggest Björn…
Well done for taking on more than one victim of war, Andrew, so many points of view to consider. The alliterative title made me feel part of it, unlike the voice in your poem that presses ‘the button / which drops the bomb’. I felt for the old women and the baby, but then, that is only to be expected.
The tragedy is not only the circle of violence that the State of Israel has visited on itself and the Palestinians by the way they set about creating, enlarging and maintaining that state – but also the way their actions have spread hatred throughout the world so that Jews are now afraid of reprisals and so are Moslems – all to maintain a set of lies…
No one ever wins in a war, and so many civilians suffer on both “sides” of every conflict. I am that weary old woman, having watched this too many times, yet each time it still is as horrifying and heartbreaking as the first. You have written a powerful argument against war, and expressed it so well.
Thank you Sherry, I have been writing essays trying to disambiguate the history of the conflict, not for the first time as each war has erupted, but I also need to write out the feelings around it, impotence, rage, sorrow and this poem has gone a long way towards that…
It’s hard for me to understand tribalism as I have no singular ethnicity or religious belief…as you stay, the genetic differences between us are minimal–how can anyone be Othered? But these conflicts have been going on, with variations, for as long as there is recorded history. It’s a mystery, and yet…we must not give up finding a way.
Bravo. Well done Andrew.
Thanks for dropping by my blog
Much💛love
You have done a great job with this prompt, Andrew. The casualties along the way are the ones who also pay the price of war.
Thank you Dwight, it is tragic to have to put poetry to such a service of humanity…
Powerful and extremely well done.
Thank you, I wish it was for something more uplifting…
Heart-wrenching imagery, Andrew. Goes straight to the point, and takes the glory out of such butchery.
There is no glory for either side Dora as long as International Law is broken…
I do care about Palestinian children. That is why I say they should surrender. Encouraging them to think they’re a nation and can fight a war is genocide against them.
The genocide is what is being done to them – not encouraging them to think they’re a nation – they have lived there longer than Israel and they are entitled to the two-state solution at the very least and just because Israel has been allowed to get away with glossing over that for 76 years does not mean that that issue has gone away. Martyrdom has been one of the few options that Palestinians have had to attract the conscience of the world – it’s tragic in the fullest sense of the word but let’s not victim blame here – Israel is the genocidist…