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Tuesday, 3 June 2025

604 Days



It’s the same people

The same voices

Speaking up

Speaking out

Sharing the pain

Of seeing genocide 

Live streamed

Their blood cries out from the ground

It bothers us

Pains us

Saddens us

But the likes and tears and angry faces

Do nothing

We can react all we like

Then scroll on

To the next horrifying story

Hour after hour

Day after day

Week after week

604 days

Of men, women and children

Blown up

Starved

Humiliated

And still it’s just the same people

The same voices

Speaking up

Speaking out

Bothered

In the midst of silence

A silence that is complicit

A silence that does not make demands

A silence that allows governments

To believe they are supported

In selling death

We need more people

More voices

Speaking up and speaking out

Blowing the trumpet

Like watchmen

Warning

Then, though they neither fear God

Nor respect man,

They will listen and bring justice

Just 

To get us 

To stop

Bothering 

Them


©️Laura Moore 2nd June 2025


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Sunday, 13 April 2025

Hosanna?

A date palm, undamaged, stands in front of a bombed house, surrounded by rubble and wreckage.
Photo: Hosny Salah, Gaza (from Pixabay)

Hosanna?

A poem for Palm Sunday


I thought Hosanna

Was a cry of praise,

Of worship

But it is a call to save

Crowds waving palms

Recognising Jesus their King

The King who would save them.

In that same land

Though arms, and legs, are taken

The cry still comes

Not Hosanna to the Son of David,

But save us

Save us now


Where is the King of Kings?


Occupiers stop clothing, kill crops

No cloaks to spare

To spread upon the ground 

— they’re needed now for tents –

Any plant too precious to strew

For anything can be eaten

When you’re hungry enough

Only rubble to mark his path

Only dust

Ash

Bodies

But still the people cry

Praises to their God

Prayers for peace, justice, mercy

Hosanna!

Save us now!


Where is the King of Kings?


Crowds picked off

One by one by one

Family by family

The plan to erase their existence

Occupiers’ ignorance

Don’t they know?

If the people cannot cry out

The stones will shout

Broken buildings bellow

War-torn windows wail

Ravaged roads roar

Save us!

Save us now!


Where is the King of Kings?


He rides into the pain

Never flinching

Climbs through the wreckage

To find the voices calling

Thick with dust

Through the ash

Under rubble

Where houses fell

On people

Who cried

Screamed

Whispered

Save us


Where is the King of Kings?


Not on a donkey

But in the hands of brave men

Who pull away bricks

And stroke the cheeks

Of terrified children

He is beneath the rubble

Beside babies with blank eyes

Resigned to this existence 

He is with the women baking

Feeding crowds from nearly nothing

In a pit, hastily dug,

Embracing men who sought only to rescue

And were erased for that crime

Hosanna?


Where is the King of Kings?


A donkey leads the procession

Of broken refugees

He draws near

Still weeps over Jerusalem

Weeps over Jabalia

Over Rafah and Ramallah

And Khan Younis

And the West Bank

Over every broken soul

Hosanna

If only you had known 

The things that make for peace!



©️Laura Moore, Palm Sunday 2025

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