Well Bottom Blues

After Bob Kaufman‘s All Those Ships That Never Sailed

All those ships that never landed

in the Port of Gaza, their cargoes

of bread and of medicine for the hospitals

reduced to rubble, are now stranded

in other ports, empty, bleeding rust.

Trapped in a racist nightmare land

with no hope of escape by sea

here poets are murdered,

an involuntary vow of silence

The nightmares of the children

do not trouble our televisions.

The hunger of the children

is foreign to our Costcos.

Munitions feed our GDP.

All the wars to end all wars

planted unexploded ordinance

in the once green fields, so that

war ever after would bloom

down through the generations.

Soon the Jewish prince will

dance down Gaza Street

invoking Moses

and make every Arab

vanish.