I Wish I'd Written This

Breaking the Silence (an Israeli soldier testifies to the Vets organisation)

By Brian Carlin

“People at the school sat -
hours in the sun.

They could get water
once in a while,

but let’s say some kid asked for water

five times,

a soldier could come to him and slap him
just like that.
I saw many soldiers using their knees
to hit them,

just out of boredom.

Because
you’re standing around for 10 hours doing nothing,
you’re bored,

so you hit them.

At the bathroom, there was this ‘demons’ dance’
as it was called.
Anyone who brought a Palestinian there –
it was catastrophic.

Not bleeding beatings –
they stayed dry –

but still beatings.”

This is not a 'nice' poem but one which I think essential both to be written and to be read. In fact it's pretty much a 'found' poem.  

Brian Carlin, a psychiatric nurse in Scotland, whose poetry blog, Big Ape Diary, I like to visit from time to time, says of this poem in his replies to readers' comments:

The whole thing was an uninterrupted quote from an Israeli soldier and only had a couple of words changed for the sake of the read…

I read the article in the Independent, and took the words from an Israeli sergeant …and tried to arrange them in line breaks to do the theme justice…

The whole article in the Independent really choked me up, I felt it made sense to use the actual words of an Israeli soldier to testify to the brutality which is taking place in the name of State Power…

Even found poems must be crafted into poetry, and that takes fine judgment. I think the treatment in this case is very appropriate. Horrific subjects are often best treated baldly, requiring no further embellishment. The line breaks here do indeed do all the work needed.

Brian has published a chapbook, A Crateful of Empties and a longer collection, A Skinful of Dust, with Erbacci Press, where they are available for purchase.

Poems and photos used in ‘I Wish I’d Written This’ remain the property of the copyright holders (usually their authors).