Gene Barry reading the poem 'Boom Time' in Amsterdam
Channel: Tsead Bruinja
Date: 2014-10-19

Boom Time 2006

Just another typical Gaza morning.
Jimril, worn out bald Palestinian man 
- ex-farmer, ex-husband and ex-father – 
whose voice has been left in his groves
screams loud nonsense as he busily 
picks and wraps butchered limbs 
in tattered rags. Mulched legumes 
dress the dead body of the young girl 
who minutes earlier had greeted 
another customer with a smile. 
A booted foot is visible 
amid the twisted wrecks, 
shrapnel having severed it from its owner. 
The market flames with 
burning blackening bodies and 
all but one of the prostrate gasps 
his last as swallowed blood steals his air. 
Later, across the square from inside 
the high school wall 
wails broadcast over the mechanical arms 
that hiss and hum as they dig 
and scrape and push. 
By Dhuhr the truck remnants have been cleared 
to facilitate the umbilical of humanitarian traffic.
From over the hill a drone is heard 
for the umpteenth time 
and to the crane-driver 
a taxi driver beckons 
with his one fingered hand, 
anxious and frightened. 
Early in the afternoon 
dreadlocks of illegal phosphorus 
choke the landscape 
and cloud their pitiful view, and 
happiness and happy faces have departed.

Geneva, city of convention is furious.

On just another Irish morning,
Jimmy was busy in mid-banter;
the small ball, the oval, the
O’Neill ball and the weather.
He chops and weighs and wraps;
skilled raconteur, master butcher.
The Centra girl greets all 
with ‘lovely day’ greetings, 
smiles and talks night talk 
with her same-age customers. 
Around eleven the booted 
and highly visible hit the village 
and clear the last of the
darker sausages and stiff rashers.
All but one can’t wait for 
the first swallow of the fizzy drink;
Jesus I was gasping.
Across the road the pumps are quieter 
and at their garage a few doors down
mechanical clanks drift out of the ex-forge 
in tandem with 103 FM;
a hiss and hum from a compressor.
The last of the delivery trucks 
is gone by Angelus time and shortly
after the square facilitates treble parkers 
picking up their uniformed school kids. 
The umpteenth tractor drones down the hill 
toward the old mill, 
its driver a single-finger-waver
anxious for the comfort of soft ground,
his un-taxed vehicle now illegal.
By early afternoon thick white clouds 
have dulled their landscape, and 
happiness and happy faces have remained.


© Gene Barry