Poetry, March 2004, www.aljazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
|
|
|
Soft Targets
By Diana Gwinn
March 6, 2004
They like the “soft targets” most of all.
Stone-faced pilots
Just doing their job
Raining death from above.
Cluster bombs, brightly colored
Disguised like soda pop cans
Explode in young, tender hands.
Steel shards shot in the air
Rip through a bus filled with civilians
Shattering the supple spine of a 15 year old.
Choruses of talking heads
As if in a trance
Regurgitate in unison
Smart bombs, surgical strikes, deep penetration, collateral damage
While the war machine plays on and on.
Another church explodes in “Bombingham”.
Four little black girls dressed in their Sunday best
Pastel pink and blue
Turned to charcoal burnt flesh.
Police rejoice high-fiving in joy and glee
A young woman their target
Her once vibrant body pumped with bullets
Just another death by cop.
Radioactive metal streams gushing toxins
Hidden in copper IUD’s
Invade warm, fertile folds
Poisoning a woman’s uterus.
White-uniform clad medical professionals
Employees of the state
Inject death into the veins of a Vietnam War hero
Piercing his mother’s battered and bruised heart
On the anniversary of his birth.
A desperate mother begs on the sidewalk
Like frightened baby deer
Her hungry children hover near
It’s a hit by U.S. welfare deform
A contract on poor mothers and children of America.
The blood of Palestinian children
Soaks the soil from which they spring
Israeli soldiers, god’s chosen few,
Obey orders from Tel Aiv and Washington
“Cut them off and kill them”
Before they grow.
5,000 Iraqi children in 1991
12 years later, now there are none.
Says “Mad-lyn” Albright, Secretary of Hate,
Its worth the price I think, their biblical fate.
A predator man lurks in the shadows
Heartless coward, dreams of power
Steals the innocence of a blossoming girl.
Like depleted uranium bombs
made in the home of the free market
Ejaculates contaminated waste into pristine virgin soil.
“Soft targets”,
human flesh and bone
really turn them on.
Diana Gwinn is a 57 year old mother, grandmother and great-grandmother of African, Native American, Mexican (Mestizo) and European ethnicity. Her father who just died was a coal-miner and a WWII combat medic who received 4 bronze stars. Both grandfathers were coalminers. She is the oldest of 10 children.
She was the first in her family to get a college education. She has been an art teacher and she is currently working as a real-estate appraiser. She is also an activist for human rights, justice and peace. And in her spare time she writes, draws, paints, sings and dances.
 |
| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
 |
| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
 |
| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03). |
 |