#2234 - Bougie (a president visits)

 

2234

7.42

11.ii.26

Bougie

a president visits

 

the man who signed the missile

that fell on the building

that killed the children

 

he has come to bring solace

come to bring hope

he has come here

that we might unite

 

once could have been an angel of peace

 

he can never perpetrate

he is of course the victim

 

and there was his father before him

 

the man who tells the world

their children are his enemies

he is of course their victim

 

they are all his enemies

from the greatest to the least

 

he is the victim of the children!

 

he signs the missile that falls on their homes

of course it’s a targeted strike

 

he’s here to comfort and console

 

he’s here with us

for the innocent victims

victims of hate

 

there is no connection between his missile

and the innocent deaths here he comes to console

 

he is here to bring comfort and solace

he’s not here to divide

 

Labour values!

he might have been Prime Minister once

but hate was stronger than he is

 

he is the man who signed the missile

oh he is a lion-come-lately

 

that’s what we expect

 

how can he be complicit in genocide

when he is the victim of genocide?

 

his enemies are terrorists, extremists, jihadists

 

he has accused all of the residents

of the open-air prison his nation built

he has signed for it all

 

he has condemned the survivors to dust

bones and dust

the eyeless, the limbless, the homeless

 

he is the man who signed the missile

that fell on the hospital

that killed the doctors, the children

 

he’s not here for apartheid

he’s here for democracy!

from one democracy to another

that’s how he’s here

 

we welcome him

with open arms

 

we only make the bomb bay doors

you can’t blame us

 

what are weapons to this?

what’s money to this?

 

they bulldoze our graveyard too

it’s like we were never there

 

but didn’t we all have a part in the Bible?

some sort of walk-on role?

 

a slingshot, a haircut

a temple falls down  

and here we are today

the world’s all upside down

 

he’s the man who signed the missile

that fell on anyone at all

it was a precision strike

80,000 dead from this precision

30,000 precisely dead children

 

precisely all of them my enemy

show me where to sign

 

how many more maimed?

 

and still the trauma is all his

he’s here to comfort and console

 

believes that his enemies just pretending

playing possum for now 

his enemies only pretend to exist

 

where is their name in the book?

 

a blood libel

if you’ll disagree

 

he denies what he knows to be true

 

he is the man who signs the missile

 

fists of the police – they’re nothing

they’re not his

 

the man who signed the missile

he keeps his dignified calm

 

it is the calm of centuries spat on

it is the calm of murders survived

 

none of the anger is his

he is an educated man

 

there are more groves to bulldoze

 

the settlers – they are forming their wagons in a great circle

the circle is ever expanding

is it on to Babylon tomorrow?

that’s what it says in the book

 

taking their houses, their villages, out

 

they are not really a people

we are

they are making it all up

they pretend nakba

they pretend to have lived in this land

 

they have imagined that they were here

have imagined themselves

they’re from nowhere

they were put up to this

and this is our land

 

given and chosen it says in the book

the others are just names

names of the gone

names to pretend

 

what a comfort it is that this man is here!

 

and the man who sent the police to charge

to hem them in, provoke

to justify them later

who’d ban the author if he could

he is a righteous man, he is

he is one of the righteous

 

and our Prime Minister

weepy again

one of the righteous

a victim too

of all who won’t see how just his cause

his hybris

a victim of all who see through him

to the corpse pile

to the hate that goes on giving

 

he is trying to dial things down

by bringing us

the man who

signed the missile

that fell on the children

maimed whom it did not kill

that took out the hospital could have healed

because there was a tunnel under

with murder in its heart

it’s true

 

he’s one of the best

he really is

he even once apologized

but that was for something before his time

 

and there was a time he could be an angel of peace

but now he signs the missile

 

this is all that he remembers of the past

that he and his are victims

 

nothing makes sense anymore

 

if they would do what was done to them

if they would commit the same crime…

 

there’s an old dusty book

tells the man

that all this was given

and more to come

and all this is forever

 

then we come to

the pointy end of the missile

 

when I think of the people he purports to lead

the ages of persecution survived

the exiles, the pogroms

the pitchforks and fire

 

when I think of the moral compass of the past

of what so many have learned there

 

when I think of humanity’s greatest thoughts

the music that’s moved me, discoveries. inventions

 

compassion, a mitzvah for peace

 

when I look at this man

who he’s become

what his country’s become

how a brand can be trashed

how he was invited and why

how hate makes hate

how death brings death

 

I’m sorry for your loss