WAR Poem: Watermelons and War, by Amy Pugsley

I keep seeing people go
Back and forth like
Tragic table tennis
Jews vs. Muslims
Israeli vs. Palestinians
East vs. West
Civilized vs. barbaric
Freedom fighters vs. terrorists
Colonizer vs. colonized

Yet I don’t see
The Christians in the West
Who yell and scream about
Loving Jesus
Ever act like the sandal-wearing
Son of God
Brown-skinned Palestinian
Prophet Jesus who
They claim is the reason
For the season
Spanning so far right on the political spectrum
Span so far right
Right
Right
Right off the spectrum into extremism

Keep Jesus the reason for the season
It’s Adam and Eve, not John and Steve
War on Christmas like
Imagine being so fragile that you have to
Build a wall
So high it hides your evil heart
Spans so far into abstraction
Other Christians wonder if
We even have the same Jesus, the same
Abrahamic roots
Same Allah, Yahweh, God
Thank God that they don’t know

Thank God they forgot
Thank God they aren’t willing to see
That there are Middle Eastern
Christians

I keep seeing people say
God bless America sing
‘Andtherocketsredglare
Thebombsburstinginair’
Before a baseball game
Before a football game
As US-funded Israeli bombs ‘burst(ing) in air’ above hospitals
Before a busy day at an underfunded public school
As Us-funded Israeli missiles ‘burst(ing) in air’ above mosques
Before a busy day at an underfunded public clinic
As US-funded food is parachuted to starving victims
Can you see the collateral damage
‘By the dawn’s early light?’
There will be no one and nothing left
Making it easy to understand
It is
and always
has been
Us vs. them

I keep seeing people go
Back and forth like
Tragic table…
Wait.
Before we publish this
Are we the us or the them?