No Belt

What you see is not a pin-up of a young boy showing off his lean torso and jogging pants.
The title refers to a sight all too familiar in parts of the Middle East over the last few decades. At a checkpoint or in a hold-up, a teenage boy is lifting his tee shirt to show that he is not wearing a bomb-belt. 

Here is to the dead, those killed, for us, and by us.
To those who are dying now.
To the “incidents" that happen.
The occupations that continue.
The mindless glorification of military solutions.
The terminology that grows softer, as attitudes harden and hatred increases.
One cannot colonise a land if you call it empty
but when you do a body count, you’ll find plenty.
(MD 2006)