GAZA
- run
- don’t run
- run
- the sky moves
- doesn’t move
- moves
- the sky moves
- the ground moves
- an F16
- firing something, the F16
- dropping something, the F16
- a generator
- sounds like a generator
- generator
- only sounds like a generator
- a generator
- drones sound like generators
- sounds like a generator
- a tank shell
- plops like a tank shell
- it’s a tank shell
- intense bright lights
- out at sea, those lights
- intense bright lights
- blinking now, those lights
- out at sea, intense bright lights
- the sand spurts
- spirals, the sand-column spurts
- curtain of sand, opens, spurts
- run
- don’t run
- hide, then run
- nowhere to run
- nowhere to hide and run
- fight
- can’t run, fight
- can’t hide, fight
- fight
Wilson John Haire. 30th July, 2014
GAZA CITY 7th AUGUST 2014
- Be reminded of Israeli atrocities
- don’t let the years ease the pain
- through your liberal generosity
- though you watched it
- through glass
- without the putrid smell
- via the box of the mass
- the nostrils not blocked
- from dust berserk
- from enemy incoming
- shells
- nor do you feel the heat
- from the burning rubble
- but from under it
- you heard the cries
- didn’t see six blackened bodies
- a mother and baby welded together
- a father smothered by his three young sons
- in panic
- lies
- on tin stretchers
- one alive
- a nine year old girl legs flailing
- unconscious trying to
- run
- then silence
- she thinks she dies
- they who did it
- plead anti-Semitism
- plead Holocaust
- take out writs
- plead military hardware
- from the land
- of burger and fries
Wilson John Haire 7th August, 2017
GAZA ON MY MIND
- You thought you were free to think,
- to distinguish, to judge,
- when on to your mind they erected
- a fence
- of barbed chain-link,
- you thought from the truth
- you couldn’t be budged
- but with this cacophony of tin pots
- you lost the knack.
- One, or was it two, brave souls
- launched
- their fire-kite, the slingshot, the catapult
- at that border
- then, from the watchtowers there winged
- origami planes to order
- as media pulp.
- Up to your waist now in it,
- apologising, suspending, expelling
- those who go near the edge,
- when it should be up with your mitts.
- While brave Gazans
- expire in their prison land-wedge.
W.J, Haire. 1st August, 2018.
Labour Affairs Magazine 