War Toys
News coverage in Gaza
Fuck the white flash
The sudden burst of light becomes the colour of eternal night for all those nearby,
whether it leaps off a young man’s body in grotesque sacrifice or fell like screaming angels from the sky
Either way there are few it passes over this time who do not die.
Fuck the black muzzle
The scratchy Velcro mask that hides the face of a young madman barking through the screen.
‘Arab Dogs!’ he says?
‘Jewish Dogs!’ maybe.
The foam fires off their hot, rattling teeth until they all sound alike to me, same face, same words and all saying the same fucking thing. Something about how all they want is to be free.
Fuck the yellow sand
The hollow shell of ancient land kicked up by madly raging tanks or gripped in prostrate mourner’s hands.
Fleeing the chaos in a frantic cloud it makes the outside watchers proud to wear it as their defining badge, as they stand around in practised frowns at the tragedy of it all
‘How sad!’
Fuck the red dye
Fuck the green, the black, the olive drab and fuck the blue and white. Fuck all the flags, none are worthy to shroud the pale body of a murdered, no wait, ‘Martyred’ Child.
There is enough red staining the ground, enough green envy on either side. Plenty of hearts blackened by smoke, enough skin bruised blue or drained white.
Giles Longley-Cook
Let the Land Choose
Who do you think the HolyLand
Would choose: Palestine or Israel?
Do you expect the birthplace of 3
Religions to ever really be peaceful?
I mean—Jesus was a saint,
Tortured and crucified by men with gold.
Do we celebrate Pilot’s cursed victory
Or the sacrifices made by a saint,
A hero, who rises from the dead?
His Resurrection marked by Easter eggs,
Reproduction. Do miracles
Require modernity or tradition
To appear? Chemicals or nature?
Mind or heart? Bulldozing olive trees,
Whose oil sustained families, diet
And economy, Israel is yet to produce
A decent olive oil. It’s blood somehow
Curdles with the juice of branches needed
To extract an extra virgin olive.
The HolyLand seemingly chooses bullets,
Nightclubs, Capitalism, Snobbery-
(Ignorance is bliss)—but the roots
The veins reaching into mountains’
Throats seem to not be cooperating.
Why is that? Ask Jesus, the rebel,
Who'd say: First get to love Palestine.
Who do you think the HolyLand
Would choose: Palestine or Israel?
Do you expect the birthplace of 3
Religions to ever really be peaceful?
I mean—Jesus was a saint,
Tortured and crucified by men with gold.
Do we celebrate Pilot’s cursed victory
Or the sacrifices made by a saint,
A hero, who rises from the dead?
His Resurrection marked by Easter eggs,
Reproduction. Do miracles
Require modernity or tradition
To appear? Chemicals or nature?
Mind or heart? Bulldozing olive trees,
Whose oil sustained families, diet
And economy, Israel is yet to produce
A decent olive oil. It’s blood somehow
Curdles with the juice of branches needed
To extract an extra virgin olive.
The HolyLand seemingly chooses bullets,
Nightclubs, Capitalism, Snobbery-
(Ignorance is bliss)—but the roots
The veins reaching into mountains’
Throats seem to not be cooperating.
Why is that? Ask Jesus, the rebel,
Who'd say: First get to love Palestine.
Farrah Sarafa
