Is it wrong to make a song
of bombardment:
stucco walls turning crimson
through the alchemy of war,
rich & poor apartments ground together,
schools collapsed on collateral schoolchildren,
mosques hollowed into husks,
houses crushed in snuff films,
the missiles’ jizz,
a blizzard of shards small enough
for a gizzard, some red-eyed
rock dove’s crop?
Yes. Violence has
too strong a valence.
Unsing it,
goddamn it.
Stop.
***
Snuff films: see here.
Prompted by this selection of words at ReadWritePoem.
This entry was posted Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 1:51 pm, last modified at 10:07 am, 7/5/09
and is filed under Personal/Political, Poems & poem-like things and tagged Gaza, greatest hits. 
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“schools collapsed on collateral schoolchildren”
so sadly true. I like it a lot.
and yes: Stop
I didn’t grieve until I read this. Thank you.
This poem, so apropos, in this day of Gaza. Great use of the cloud of words.
………….stucco
……..rich & poor
…………gizzard
…………goddamn
my house
everyone
my throat
pure sin
Thank you for this. Painful and beautiful and eloquent.
Guts pouring out in this…
somebody watching you!
yes,
goddamn it.
Stop.
Unsing it.
Every line is a missal of shattered life. So well done it hurts.
Hmm. Who was it who said “Speaking out is the easy part. Finding a form for one’s words with the power to melt hearts and change minds–that’s harder”? Ah yes, I remember.
What Deb and Bill said.
a silent tune unheard in the alchemy of power and peace…
I’m glad to read these words, strong and demanding. I think I must have stopped believing that things could be any different, so stopped asking.
Thanks for all the comments, folks. I have another poem on the way, but at the moment I’m hard at work on the qarrtsiluni podcast. It’s kind of interesting listening to all those apocalyptic poems at once…
Great sound… I have love for internal rhyme, hidden couplet, alliteration and assonance.
I grok your word magic.
Like it,
especially “Unsing it/goddamn it.”