GAZA
(this was composed in Oct 08 before the recent bloody killings by all the enraged, which make the metaphor even more painful. KB)
Between the ocean and the wall
(container of procreation, feeding, multiplying
and hideous thoughts I’m afraid of
and ashamed to find, of limits
and the end of possibility)
a sea of people encased
in the thin concrete strip called Gaza
where there is no free land
and little water no room for the newborn
for the young men and women
whose only freedom is in loving or dying
no jobs, nothing to produce or dream
education hijacked by mystic belief
and reality offers no hope
I cry for them.
An animal shelter collects unwanted
cats and dogs and saves them
from being eaten in the backwoods
of city jungles, starving in plains
of asphalt, lonely places.
The shelters are full,
more come than go to homes.
The small house of cages fills
this little Gaza, with its sound
of intermittent growls, hisses.
Cats rub against each other.
Gaza is our future, I cry for us.
The walls of our Gaza contains
all of us, the billions of us
programmed with rampant desires and despair.
We all need fulfillment, loving,
merging into another, creating children
filling each square foot of space
that might have been used to grow
wheat, peaches, olives and oil.
Now feet trample all to dust
that’s not covered in hard top
around concrete block houses
rising up to house the families
who’ve never known space between people.
The crunch, the slum, the piles are normal
and the old biblical demand
“be fruitful for there is room in heaven
for all on earth now and ever more.”
sanctions filling Gaza.
Why is the world to become Gaza?
Can’t our species evolve fast enough to stop it
change our inner brains, outer beliefs?
Why such dark views?
we don’t live in such a space
imprisoned by another power
we believe growth is good
preserves prosperity
needs more consumers
needs more workers
brings in the harvest
fills the factories and mail rooms
provides all the luxuries
of past generations.
The walls of Gaze are everywhere now
our breeding waiting to enclose us.
We hear the grinding of a back hoe
scraping granite ledge, air hammers,,
sounds of encroachment
our world filling.
Jan 30 2009