By Rassool Jibraeel Snyman
I look for the stars in Gaza
I cannot see them
The smoke blinds me
The acrid smell
of burned flesh chokes me
Bodies litter the landscape
My hands covered in blood
My uniform stained scarlet
What beast have I become
Israel what have you done to me
What have you turned me into
In the name of your twisted dreams
I became inhuman
In the name of your ideology
A mindless predator
A military criminal
Who kills without second thought
Wife and child
Husband and son
Dreams and hopes
And thus descend into bestiality
Of joy and laughter
And human connectivity
I am devoid
They died with the first salute
And bullet fired
With every one thereafter
I died a little more
At every checkpoint I decayed
Putrefied
My soul corrupted
Every home destroyed
A step deeper into the hell of bestiality
Israel what have you done to me
What have you made me become
I call your name chant your mantras
Pray to your Zionist gods
The nightmares remain
Vivid
Frightening
Beastly
No peace do I find
In the barren landscape
Where I was once human
My decency recedes
With every act
Of systemic theft
and calculated murder
What beast have I become
Victim of a twisted dream
Political lies
Ideological deceit
Theological conceit
Moral defeat
Of land theft
Depredation
Degradation
I have died inside
My smile no more than
Flexing muscles
Plastered on a dead face
And empty being
Can I recant
And expunge the stain
The darkness
That pervades my soul
That makes me less than human
Less than the person I once was
Can I return to sanity
To the innocence that was
I who know the murder of my forbears
The pain of discrimination
Am covered in shame
And criminality
I skulk in the shadows
For the light lays bare my crimes
Nakedness and shame
Starkly
Coldly
Relentlessly
Remorselessly
My rationalization
Meaningless
Senseless
In the face of sanity
Moral rectitude
And the voice that speaks in the still of the night
Softly
Accusingly
From the bowels of Hades
My name is called
I stand at the abyss
And weep
For what my hands have wrought
My self induced blindness
I rent my garments
And cover myself in ashes
My dirge created by my own hands and design
Takes me to my moral mausoleum
Where l shall lie in ignominy
For aye
History shall point accusingly at me
At what I am
What I had done
What I had become
Posterity shall turn their heads
And avert their eyes
My forbears in Auschwitz their backs
In shame and sorrow
I lament
Grieve
Am distraught
It was I who took the first step
Trod the path to my perdition
Imbibed the delusion
Became the deceit
Thus began my descent into bestiality
Woe to those
Who raise guns
And rain bombs
And oppress
And murder
And steal
In the name of twisted ideologies
And murderous politics
The yawning pit awaits
Beware the darkness
Beware the descent into bestiality
It is the death of your soul
The death of who you are
Who you could be
Beware of being beast
In the twilight
Of deceitful politics
And electoral hysteria
(South Africa – January 03, 2009; "Tales of Extreme Sanity")
