Descent into Bestiality

By Rassool Jibraeel Snyman

I look for the stars in Gaza

I cannot see them

The smoke blinds me

The acrid smell

of burned flesh chokes me

Bodies litter the landscape

My hands covered in blood

My uniform stained scarlet

What beast have I become

Israel what have you done to me

What have you turned me into

In the name of your twisted dreams

I became inhuman

In the name of your ideology

A mindless predator

A military criminal

Who kills without second thought

Wife and child

Husband and son

Dreams and hopes

And thus descend into bestiality

Of joy and laughter

And human connectivity

I am devoid

They died with the first salute

And bullet fired

With every one thereafter

I died a little more

At every checkpoint I decayed

Putrefied

My soul corrupted

Every home destroyed

A step deeper into the hell of bestiality

Israel what have you done to me

What have you made me become
 

I call your name chant your mantras

Pray to your Zionist gods

The nightmares remain

Vivid

Frightening

Beastly

No peace do I find

In the barren landscape

Where I was once human

My decency recedes

With every act

Of systemic theft

and calculated murder

What beast have I become
 

Victim of a twisted dream

Political lies

Ideological deceit

Theological conceit

Moral defeat

Of land theft

Depredation

Degradation

 I have died inside

My smile no more than

Flexing muscles

Plastered on a dead face

And empty being

Can I recant

And expunge the stain

The darkness

That pervades my soul

That makes me less than human

Less than the person I once was

Can I return to sanity

To the innocence that was
 

 I who know the murder of my forbears

The pain of discrimination

Am covered in shame

And criminality

 I skulk in the shadows

For the light lays bare my crimes

Nakedness and shame

Starkly

Coldly

Relentlessly

Remorselessly

My rationalization

Meaningless

Senseless

In the face of sanity

Moral rectitude

And the voice that speaks in the still of the night

Softly

Accusingly
 

From the bowels of Hades

My name is called

 I stand at the abyss

And weep

For what my hands have wrought

My self induced blindness

I rent my garments

And cover myself in ashes

My dirge created by my own hands and design

Takes me to my moral mausoleum

Where l shall lie in ignominy

For aye

History shall point accusingly at me

At what I am

What I had done

What I had become

Posterity shall turn their heads

And avert their eyes

My forbears in Auschwitz their backs

In shame and sorrow

I lament

Grieve

Am distraught

It was I who took the first step

Trod the path to my perdition

Imbibed the delusion

Became the deceit

Thus began my descent into bestiality
 

Woe to those

Who raise guns

And rain bombs

And oppress

And murder

And steal

In the name of twisted ideologies

And murderous politics

The yawning pit awaits

Beware the darkness

Beware the descent into bestiality

It is the death of your soul

The death of who you are

Who you could be

Beware of being beast

In the twilight

Of deceitful politics

And electoral hysteria

(South Africa – January 03, 2009; "Tales of Extreme Sanity")

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