Except there are no doors left now
after those bunker buster bombs &
controlled demolition with charges
placed to assure total destruction

So only tent flaps are left to knock
on and many of those plastic veils
have gone up in flame over the heads
of their immolated occupants but no

Don’t use the word GENOCIDE don’t
say HOLOCAUST or mention ethnic
cleansing where in Gaza they have
a choice between giving up open air

prison for concentration camp death
either/or deportation to dictatorship
In E. Africa/ civil wars in Somalia or
Sudan (where Darfur GENOCIDE is so
              many decades long).

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.