Manual to a Massacre - A poem for Palestine

Manual to a Massacre

To those suspended in the salty waters of life roaming in a sea of oblivion, please be aware that the floating devices of death could implode your integrity and steadfast passion for justice into splattered shards and debased debris of internecine intentions used for Israeli Defence Force (IDF) investigations. Effigies burning lacerated bodies on seashores are wounded marks that delineate dissolving territories into nihilistic waves of a dead sea. The following jingoistic terms will clarify the proper rules of engagement that conflagrate international law:

Palestinians – a people who wait.

Gaza - non place on a road map to nowhere.

Flotilla – historically a Spanish warship. Currently, a buoyant rusty shed of humanitarian refuse housing broken wheelchairs that transport paralysed senses and delicately mute figurines. Contrary to other definitions put forward by (Ha)Bibi, it is definitely a love boat.

IDF Commandos – most moral of men to embrace violence professionally in their coarse veins converting citizens of dual nationalities (i.e. Australian) into necropolitical narcissists.

Mavi Marmara – blue marble stone that turns to red with infusions of haemorrhaging haemoglobin and transfusions of deadly detritus.

Apartheid – not just a South African phenomenon of politicide, nor a state of exception but an ultimate state of fallen disgrace.

Poetry – to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric, to write poetry after Deir Yassin is tragic.

Writing – a crippled labour in the face of the ineluctability of limbs flailing, people waiting, mothers wailing, moral barricading and prolonged moments of agitating over words... that are ultimately failing.

Justice – impossible in its promise to come.

Irony – sorely needed in these times.

Palestine – more than just a cause.



Farid Farid
04/06/10