Starting From Scratch With Ol' Scratch

Starting from Scratch with Ol’ Scratch
by Michael R. Burch

Love, with a small, fatalistic sigh
went to the ovens. Please don’t bother to cry.
You could have saved her, but you were all tied up
complaining about the Jews to Reichmeister Grupp.

Scratch that. You were born after World War II.
You had something more important to do:
while the children of the Nakba were perishing in Gaza
with the complicity of your government, you had a noble cause (a
religious tract against homosexual marriage
and various things gods and evangelists disparage.)

Jesus will grok you? Ah, yes, I’m quite sure
that your intentions were good and ineluctably pure.
After all, what the hell does he care about Palestinians?
Certainly, Christians were right about serfs, slaves and Indians.
Scratch that. You’re one of the Devil’s minions.
Copyright © | Year Posted 2019

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Krutsinger Avatar
December 9, 2019 at 3:54 AM
Oh, wow! This deserves a second, third, fourth and fifth read. I am diving back in. I do not want to miss anything, Michael.
Burch Avatar
December 9, 2019 at 5:03 AM
Orthodox Christians have been wrong about major things in the past: antisemitism and the persecution of Jews, slavery, witch hunts, the burning of "heretics" at the stake. Today, I think they are wrong about what is happening to Palestinian children and their mothers in Gaza and the West Bank. That is my poem's main point.
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