1.
Invent a war.
Something bloody and fratricidal.
Lose an uncle to barrel bombs
a brother to secret police.

2.
Three years in, flee.
Pack only what you can carry:
clothes, smartphone, children, cash.
Slip away at night, in silence.

3.
Take your leave of the flat, bakery, office,
rubble-filled streets where the kids once ran
shell of the cafe where old men
drank qahwa, played she...

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it’ll be the comfort of the saturday afternoons of your childhood
sat in front of the TV with bread and dripping
watching John Wayne set the world to rights with a gun
it’ll be Kenneth More on tin legs reaching for the sky
with a re-mix of stirring music Vaughan Williams would kill for
it’ll be a tearjerker in the final reel
where you know the hero’s going to die
but his girl will remember ...

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Let us pretend 

that we haven’t been this way before

too recently and too often

that this is the way forward

that it is the road to the peace

which eluded you when you sent 

planes and tanks and men 

into Lebanon, Ramallah, Jenin,

Gaza, Gaza, Gaza.

Let us pretend

that this time will be different 

that this time will be worth it

that you can tot up the lives...

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