Jerusalem Odessa

Poem by Steve Day

Walk upon the rubble In the Odessa Bar
of Jerusalem, they were drinking shell shock from the clouds,
by whatever name this place is known no one loves them as much as this;
walk upon the rubble, except perhaps their own camouflage leaders.
and the collateral crucifixion, Imported weapons of missile mass
the philistines who mine the Palestine line now saturate the sky
of the Gaza Sunset Strip. and glow like the Second Coming avengers
Saviours and survivors, from someone else’s Armageddon.
all people who need to name Blame, a weak sweet honey tea,
their country. it slips easily down the throat whilst
What has become written in blood the circle of sand 
is now dried in the intense heat in Red Square
of yet another suicide. wrecks a bitter herb of havoc.
These deaths breed like Sanctioned Port of Call, refugees
brides and grooms of slaughter. swallowing smoke and salt.

Stealth is a boy with a bomb Foreign currency brings waves of desire,
strapped to his chest as if containing the wind breathing across Odessa
water for the desert. with particles of spies and lies
He implodes like prayers. unrecognisable from each other.
It’s a devil of a news report, Then comes the cinematic attack
filed to catch the copy deadline in editorial TV detail
for CNN. by the BBC, engrained with virtual certainty
Your family is the foreign danger relayed by bloody imagery.
marking everybody else as Cut! The resistance tea drinker,
enemy and no one as a possible friend. bleeding from her own insides.
Hide in the cracks of the city walls called Odessa, rebuilt as
Jerusalem and wait for transformation asylum, now the deep blue sea;
at the Gates of Zion. such old betrayals
Forever is a narrow margin. do not come with a disciple’s kiss.
          Something better,
                    something better be better
    than this.

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