WAR NEWS

text and drawing for War News poetry series

As of June  6, 2024, at least 36,654 Palestinians have been killed since Israel began its offensive against Hamas in Gaza on October 7, 2023. Beau Beausoleil began WAR NEWS on October 8, 2023 and closed the series on June 3, 2024 with over 200 poems. Of these, 90 poems are available as a free e-book in the online journal, AGITATE! A selection of 24 poems from the first two months of the Israel-Hamas War is included here.

Beau writes of the series:

“Writing poetry is the means by which I think through both personal and global events. I began writing these poems on October 8, 2023 with the onset of the violence in Gaza and I have written one, sometimes two, each day of this ongoing war. They are, to me, markers of witness, and each one holds my thinking and somatic reaction to this monstrously evil war.

“It is also my wish to jolt readers with these poems, to remind them, as well as myself, that we cannot turn away. That our humanity, our collective morality, requires that we bear witness and then take some kind of action. Each morning, when I have no words left to address what is going on, I begin to write. In the end, these poems may be both useless and necessary.”

Beau’s poems stand in witness to some of the most immoral acts of our time. In addition to WAR NEWS, two other series appear in the MPP Digital Poetry Series: In Ukraine: Poems and Poems for George Floyd. In 2019, Moving Parts Press published a letterpress edition of Beau’s book, The Long Distance.

Find more from the MPP Digital Poetry Series here.


 

War
News

Nothing
will
go back
to the
way
it was

Nothing
will look
the same
as it was

Only the
deep
emptiness
of loss
will be
the same

Only the
barriers
to freedom
will be
recognizable

And made
Stronger

(10/14/23)

 


 

War
News

Is this
enough
death
and
misery

Will it
be enough
tomorrow

or the day
after

Tell us what
metrics are
being used

Are they
adding in
pain and
anguish

subtracting
the last
shreds of
freedom

Or the
number
of people
killed in
a single
family

Must the
multiplier of revenge
be added
into each
answer

And
who is
searching
the bodies
of children
for a pencil
and a crumpled
sheet or shroud
of lined paper
from school
on which
to add
things up
for another
generation

(10/16/23)

 


 

War
News

On this
present
leaden
day
there are
so many
destroyed
bodies
that there
is little
room for
words

One can
only
privately
very
softly
sing
a dirge
in the
street

or fill an
entire sky
with our
collective
lament

A child’s
shrouded
name as
a lyric

repeated
thousands
upon
thousands
of times

(10/18/23)

 


 

War
News

Those who
are doing
the killing
always want
to kill
a few
more

Those living
at the edge
of the abyss
still have
to be
forced
to jump

(10/19/23)

 


 

War
News

(for Marwan Makhoul)

I wanted
to fashion
amulets
of protection
made
from my
poems
and send
them
to you
and your
family in
the song
of a
house sparrow

But
there was
no
house
left standing
on your
street

only
rubble
and
bodies
wrapped
in their shrouds
of memory

And the
sparrow
was
killed
as it began
to sing

(10/26/23)

 


 

War
News
(for Heba Abu Nada)

I keep reading
your beautiful
poems
each night
in part
because
in them
you are
still alive
on each
closing
page

(10/30/23)

 


 

War
News

1.
Bring me
some
words
to bury
in our
garden

Bring me
a bone
whistle
to play
in our
hallway

2.
When death
releases a child
from under
the rubble
of a home

And allows her
to be pulled
back into life

I am stunned
with the
terror of hope

(11/1/23)

 


 

War
News

(for FR)

I look for
the smallest
most determined
fish
that swim from
our shore
and wonder
what messages
of peace
they might
carry for you

Unless they
are caught
with so
many others
in another
tangled net
of empty
words

and die
gasping
for truth

(11/1/23)

 


 

War
News

Who will
identify
the living
after the
dead
give up
on us
in disgust

Who will
arrange
the family
members
for the
photograph
when there
are no
family
members
left

And for
how long
can anyone
live within
the violence
of today

as it
consumes
tomorrow

(11/3/23)

 


 

War
News

Is it better to be
killed in
warm weather
or cold

Is it better to die
sitting
or standing

Is it better
to die alone
or with your
loved ones

Does it remain
troublingly
easier to read
the murderous
news 
than to live in it

(11/5/23)

 


 

War
News

Let
us
wear
the
shoes
of
the
innocent
dead
and
walk
into
their
names
and
violently
ended
lives

Let us
walk
under
their
breathless
sky and
demand
once again
that they
forgive us

(11/8/23)

 


 

War
News

These dead
don’t want
their bodies
written upon
by politicians

or sewn into
flags of war
that fly over
endless
cemeteries

Their names are
martyrs
in any
prayer
in any
language

These dead
don’t want
our memory
of them
loaded
into more
violence
to kill yet
another child
whose life defines
someone’s joy

(11/10/23)

 


 

War
News

What
ruined
body
can you
identify
as they
are pulled
out from
under the
killing

What can
you make
sense of
when you
can’t see
her shy
smile

(11/15/23)

 


 

War
News

We slow the hours
in our poems

we imagine
the killing ending

As
best
we
can
with
words

But even so
on some
of the cruelest days
we feel like foolish liars

who are unable to see
our own lives
between the pages

(11/15/23)

 


 

War
News

Death above
you

Death in
front of you

Death behind
you

Death to the
east of you

Death to the
north of you

Death to the
south of you

And
to the west
beyond
your shore
is the
body politic
of my country
floating
face down

waiting
waiting

on every
drowning
abandoned
road to peace

(11/16/23)

 


 

War
News

I try to extend the familiar
by writing of an apple
which could be on our
kitchen counter
or on a kitchen counter
in Gaza

If there still is a kitchen
not yet
destroyed
along with the woman
who would have cut
the apple into slices
and made tea
out of kindness to
my age
and a certain
poem that she read
about apples
so very long ago
before
the war

(11/16/23)

 


 

War
News

This
morning
my words
look like
small knots
of children
on some
playground
waiting
to go
back
into a
classroom
that no
longer 
exists

In a life
that no
longer
exists

(11/18/23)

 


 

War
News

Who deserves
to be lied to first

Is it the living
or always
the dead

(11/20/23)

 


 

War
News

I read
this war
like
a novel
of tragedy

and try
to live
in the
last page
first

wanting
to know
how things
turn out
on paper

well before
anyone else
is written
into death

(11/21/23)

 


 

War
News

We have no authority over
the moon
except in our poems
but we know that its surface
reflects our
violent misery

Which is why
I refuse
to slow my words
or cover my eyes
under this
blood-filled
harvesting
moon

(11/23/23)

 


 

War
News

The sounds
of waking

The sound
of water
boiling
for tea

The sounds
of speech
across
the table

The sound
of a page
being turned

The sound
of dishes
being washed

The sounds
of words
rushing to
a child’s
tongue

Now lost
without
memory

Now
only
a document
of violence

(11/24/23)

 


 

War
News

The Museum
of
Collective Punishment
has installed
on its walls
a permanent exhibit
of the names
and handprints
of more than
4,000 children
using
common red chalk
found in any
bombed-out
elementary
school

(11/26/23)

 


 

War
News

The body
of a forest
is cut down
and
fashioned
into products
to be sold
to us

During a
temporary
pause
in the
killing
new trees
will be
planted
again
by the
surviving
children

(11/26/23)

 


 

War
News

There are still
patches of ground
where no one has
been killed

live there until you
are told to move

There are still
patches of ground
where no one has
been buried

dig a grave there
and climb into it

(12/05/23)