By Heathcote Williams

Israel is the colostomy bag
Of a dying empire, America.

It’s emptied out each day onto Gaza.
Everyone can then settle down
To relax and enjoy
A continuous firework show
Which costs three billion dollars a year.

There are cluster bombs,
Thermobaric missiles,
Depleted uranium shells,
And white phosphorus,
All carefully choreographed
To light up Palestine’s sky.

These novelties are regularly dispatched
To a clientele hungry for pyrotechnics
From the Pentagon Incendiary Company;
Though it has a poor safety record
As its products routinely kill
Anyone who gets too close.

Resenting those who stage this spectacle
Of flying limbs, and spurting blood
And tiny corpses with napalmed flesh –
Gaza residents occasionally
Strap home-made fireworks
To their own bodies; leave
Their open-air torture chamber –
This coliseum of exploding sewage –
And put on a display for their captors.

– This poem was contributed to PalestineChronicle.com.