CHRIS THURMAN

Press conference and after

they are bombing the hospitals because of the tunnels
we shoot the children when they are armed
they are taking revenge for the hostages
we block aid workers who may be terrorists
we are shooting the hostages because of the tunnels
they are bombing the children who may be terrorists
they arm the hostages for taking revenge
we terrorise the aid workers when they are children
the tunnels are hospitals who block the shooting
the bombs may revenge the childrens’ arms
hostages terrorise aid workers in hospitals
bombs are children who may be tunnels
shooting is blocked because of revenge aid workers
hospital bomb terrorise child tunnel shoot arms

Interlude

[Solo]
Famine in Gaza and I eat my breakfast.
Famine in Gaza, still I eat my lunch.
[Everybody now]
Famine in Gaza – what’s for dinner?
My children gonna cry into their Cap’n Crunch.

Complicity I

– when I added a few sentences to say something about Gaza (I had to say something about Gaza) in an article on musicals and opera, and my editor cut them, and I politely asked for them to be reinstated, and they were, in part, but the bit about the deceit and cruelty of Zionist discourse stayed out, and the word genocide stayed out, and I thought surely this is not an editorial line or a personal preference, there must be something else at play, and because I’m a freelancer and it’s a good gig and I need the money, I let it rest and said no more –

Interlude

[Don’t sing]
Palestinians dying so I eat my breakfast
[Don’t sing]
Palestinians dying while I eat my lunch
Palestinians dying so I write a poem

Though to write poetry after Gaza, while Gaza, for Gaza
is barbaric

Complicity II

– but that wasn’t the first time of course, it started when I was a teenager I guess, when I thought it must be so cool to go and work on a Kibbutz, and I didn’t know that they –

Interlude

[Solo]
Famine in Gaza while I watch the TV
Famine in Gaza as I drink my wine
[Everybody]
Famine in Gaza all across my socials
Famine in Gaza but I’m feeling fine

No more HiroshimaRafahs

peeling concrete
unchanged, sad, refusing rehabilitation
a kind of life goes on
memorial ruin
an overheated morgue
let it remain like this, for all the world to see
anger, too, is dead
the dying afternoon
a hideous pile
relics of the catastrophe

boys crawled home
to bleed and slowly to die

remember only these

Interlude

Palestinians dying but not enough of them
Palestinians dying but they ain’t the first
Auschwitz? Rwanda? – Not genocide yet
A couple hundred thousand at the very worst

Complicity III

– actually it was earlier than that, it was church on Sundays from as long ago as I can remember, the happy songs and solemn hymns and Bible stories, Israel, promised land, ZCC, Boney M for crying out loud –

Interlude

[Solo]
Famine in Gaza all across my socials
Famine in Gaza really killing my vibe
[Together]
Famine in Gaza but they’ll all be dead soon
Famine in Gaza don’t affect my tribe

Complicity IV

– and it continues to this day, because my country for all its ills took Israel to court and so my conscience is clear, I can look up at the moon and not feel sick to my stomach, I can be like those poets, Noor said, those poets who care about the moon, well Palestinians don’t see the moon from jail cells, Noor said, and she was right, while somewhere out there a refugee-poet is crying, Don’t leave me pale like the moon! and I think of myself enjoying the moon on his behalf, and that’s also complicity –

Interlude

Famine in Gaza when I eat my breakfast
Famine in Gaza when I eat my lunch
Famine
[Don’t sing]
Famine

Fly a kite

If I must write, although poetry makes nothing happen
– yes I know it is a way of happening, a mouth –
if poetry survives
let it be a tribute to the dead
let it be a comfort to the living
let it stand accusing the killers
let it not be cliché
let the tale define the happening
somehow, somewhen
or at least
if it survives
let poetry mean Gaza.

Wallace Stevens, Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird
Chris van Wyk, in detention
Theodor Adorno, Cultural Criticism and Society
James Kirkup, No More Hiroshimas
Mahmoud Darwish, Passport
Noor Hindi, Fuck your Lecture on Craft, My People are Dying
W.H. Auden, In Memory of W.B. Yeats
Refaat Alareer, If I must die
Arthur Nortje, Native’s Letter