a poetic interlude

Kind of back to normal for this blog. I've got to tell you, the searches that people use to get here have definitely changed.

for the civilians

too scared to leave my computer night by night
thinking one keystroke might
somehow prolong a life
a gasp a grasp knowing I
had to watch because you asked
not to be forgotten
knowing I could hear you,
but the tap of nails hardly sharp or honed enough
to prise wax from the ears of
leaders and media, rat-tail lips twitching,
mottled and streaked,
sated and sleek
they will never stand tall,
yet it is you who is stooped.

my words cannot compete
with explosions that rip you from your skin,
throw the white flag from your hand,
send your scarf flying high above you
not quite fluttering like the papers
that ordered you from your house.
my words cannot compete
with bullets swooping,
magpies greedy for the glint of your jacket as you gather
the dead, the burnt, the wounded, the ones
not vacuumed into burnt beyond-recognition. you are soon to join them.
on the roads, in the schools, in their houses
your children have nowhere to run, knowing
this I watch
knowing that once it is
black and the messages no longer come through I
will know nothing except
the piles of rubble either
devoid of people or buried beneath, a soldier atop.
once it is black,
where do they go?
once it is black
where do you go?

disconfigured bodies and half-beating hearts.
Amputated, a woman gives birth and maybe
there was joy in her voice as her child
was born into a night of screaming,
because, a heartbeat is a heartbeat, a life is a life, right?
but who will hear
once all goes dark
the murmur of his heart
what chances are there
once all goes dark
to hear it any longer?

lizardrinking (c) 2009

Part of this poem was sadly inspired by this story .
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- 1015 dead, 4800 wounded.

Now 1033 dead, 4850 wounded (AFP, 15 Jan, 2009). That's the Palestinians. The Israelis remain at 10 soldiers and three civilians.

A senior Israeli defence official told AFP that the war, which has killed some 400 civilians and has sparked outrage across the Muslim world, could well continue until the January 20 inauguration of US president-elect Barack Obama.

As if that was not always the plan, and Hillary seems to have given them full support, though maybe that will change. I hope your media is telling you some of this. I know we are only getting pictures of bombed out buildings. A great deal of the world's media is not quite so sqeamish.