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