Death Is Not In Gaza Poem by Dr Igbinedion Obaretin

Death is not in Gaza!
Death is here.
Death is everywhere.
Death is all around me!

Death is not in Gaza,
Where a thousand fell last night,
Where a thousand voices of dying children,
Echoed with the sirens, wailing all night,
As explosives rained down from the peaceful skies.

Death is not in Gaza,
Where a thousand women wrapped
In blood-stained, immaculate white sheets
Head for the burial ground without flowers.
Bodies upon bodies, numbers on numbers.

Death is not in Gaza!
These people have no names.
Only numbers matter in Gaza,
Where victims are framed as aggressors,
Where bloody tears flooded desolate streets.

Death is not in Gaza,
Only bodies buried under the rubble
Of a city in ruin, a desert of a demolished civilisation.
The gift of death is not in Gaza, no way out of broken bodies.
The prison of the dehumanised, unbroken spirits.

Death is not in Gaza!
The ghosts in Gaza are not human.
They neither eat nor drink.
They know no day nor night,
Only enforced displacement, the agony of the neglected.

Death is here!
Death is around me!
In the conscience of us all, death is enthroned.

Death is here!
Death echoed our silence in the face of racial cleansing.
Death is democratic tyranny, the terrorism of the powerful.