Out In The Old Gaza Stripe Poem by Kevin Patrick

A Palestine boy with an old Disney shirt
Makes a gateway run from a backdoor kitchen.
He listens to sound beat of his childhood collapsing
Fired from the mortar and periodic shelling,
Descends from machines marching down Gaza streets
To Claim a civilian from the arms of police
As they round up children and women as cattle
With the promise of safety in undisclosed ghettos.
Something they once learnt from bygone era
Now employed as an act of state policy.
With caution deployed the boy hides from view
Making shelter in rubble and unmarked debris
He wonders if his grandmother made it out in time
or does she lay falling as the bulldozers move in
With unmerciful kindness as the wheels crushed her pinned
Now fear chokes the blood flow as the tears start to spin
For the life that he knew is now an echo of the dead
Suddenly footsteps are heard through the cracks
As he drowns in the light of an policeman's lamps
He Crouches to his knees with shock in his eye
and gazes to blue heavens for a watcher in the sky
But the angels have scattered from the blood covered earth
and not a morsel is heard from the celestial hearth
As the promise of protection in life everlasting
Has been exonerated in a fathers empty lecture
And the boy dimly looks out for a trace to believe
Yet finds only bullets and blood in his sleeve
Out in old Gaza strip where know one will see