In the beginning was the number.
11,500 people dead:
(round number)
4,710 children will neither forget
Nor remember their childhood
3,160 women
3,180 men
6,000 more eyelids forever shut
Under the rubble
14,500 bodies fertilize the soil
29,800 wounded
1.5 million bodies made homeless
2.2 million people wounded for life
In all: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, 11, 12 13, 14, 15,16,17, 18,19, 20....25....68...119...227....14,500
Please update
Keep counting without coffee breaks
Numbers too are prayers.
Dark clouds mushroom
Furiously against gravity
Turn the blue sky black
The only color at night
Is the red of missiles
The per capita share
Of food and water
Is a small fraction
Of the per capita share
Of explosives
Water is brackish
Water is a host to coliform
Soldiers round up ghosts in the hospitals
Prayers are medication
Are oxygen
The human experiment has failed
Metaphor out of fuel
14,500, 14,499...10,561...9,211...7,324...6,234...2,117...723...7,22...3,117...97...46...13...13...
9...7...3...1...0
Death is
And they are not
Please update
Keep counting until you get to zero
Start and end in zero
Keep counting
Take coffee breaks
What is sacrilege is Gaza itself
Still no end game there
Say the analysts
Gaza I say
Gaza Mon Amour
The crescent moon in the southern sky
Is my witness