Painting by Helen Redman (my mother). That’s me in her tummy and my father behind her, summer 1964.

i’m aware

down to the roots
in my guts

of all the
twisting arguments

you use

to justify
the rape, the murder, the bombing
the constant torture
of the sacred earth and her people

there are no explanations which suffice

there is only my rage, my hurt
and my anguished cry
echoing through

the day,
the laundry blowing on the line,
the broken bloody finger laying by itself
somewhere not too far off from where
your “justifiably” executed and
perfect mission placed it

any woman bloodied by violence
any man desperate to feed his family
or child forced to play in gutters of slime

is a reminder

of the men in glass rooms with big chairs
who discuss the fate of the world
as if they didn’t live in it
or have children who might
actually grow up in this
their plotted, planned and rotten

nightmare