One hundred people

August 21, 2006
iranian.com

In July,
One hundred people
Die in Baghdad everyday.
Beirut. Beit Hanun.
Numbers lose meaning

Inside an apartment building
Ali Hassan's family,
No longer water plants, brew tea, or read poetry
The dead, are even torn

From beneath the ambulance sheets

Layal Nejim, the first journalist to die,
Lebanese, Age 23
And the young Palestinian photographer
"Seriously shot and injured by shrapnel from Israeli projectiles"
Age 20,
But still surviving

Homes ending with the memory
Of sonic boom glass shatterings
Shoe laces left behind in the
Middle of a night
Where the gas tank was only half empty,
But the bridge to Damascus was already burning

As we read the New York Times,
In air conditioned American cafes

From so far away,

That we could not hear the bombs dropping
Or see the smoke rising

A carpenter worked night and day
Cutting temporary panels of pine
To fit the bodies
Of friends and family,
Entire villages
Choking beneath
Clouds of white phosphorus
And a sea of F-16s

Paradise lost
In the frail bones of five-year old girls,
Carried by mourning fathers,

From under the rubble,

Of all that life used to be.

Monday July 24, 2006