Fifty-One Empty Places at the Dinner Table

Gold cherry
Poem of the week
Pick of the Month

By Turlough

Sun, 22 Jun 2025
  • 2586 reads
40 comments
 

 

Fifty-One Empty Places at the Dinner Table

 

Crumbling bones and human dust

Lives destroyed, their pitiful remains

Lie scattered in unmarked pits

And red brick ovens across Europe

Had they all been given graves

Eight decades ago

They’d turn in them now

 

As Gazans flee their family homes

In search of a safer place

That won’t be bombed until next week

They bury their dead in back yards

And while cemeteries overflow

Thousands rot beneath the rubble

Not even a place in an unmarked pit

 

Survivors of Himmler’s heinous plan

Found that in their promised land

Of milk and honey

Watermelons grew

They knew exactly what to do

Having seen it done before

With genocide not herbicide

 

Eighty years on from the horror scene

When Auschwitz gates were opened wide

We’ve new atrocities every day

If anyone should know better now

It’s they who shelled and shot and killed

The fifty-one people in the queue

For flour and rice at Khan Younis

 

Twenty-five miles of Levantine coast

Humanity’s bloodiest slaughterhouse

A death camp like never seen before

For sixty thousand murdered souls

And more who’ll fall in blood and dust

As close behind those tanks and guns

Follow deadly hunger and disease

 

Mistress Brussels, Donald McDonald

And Public Enemy Number Ten

Arm Zion then look the other way

Who cares about the rights of children?

Who cares about all those who starve?

Who cares about international law?

Only those with hearts and spines

 

Image:

My own simple drawing of a phoenix; the very apt emblem of Gaza City.

 

Link to the BBC news report on the atrocity committed by Israel Defence Forces at Khan Younis aid distribution centre in Gaza on 17 June 2025.

 

 

Certificate U
Poem
Poetry in Commotion
Other Non-fiction

Comments

Submitted by seashore on

So good, our Terry. Everyone should read this x

Submitted by Turlough on

Many thanks Coral. I hope they do. x

Turlough

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

What a world we live in. There was an article in the news yesterday about people just switching off all news notifications on their phones because they were being overwhelmed by so many. I think It's important not to switch off. Thank you for this turlough

 

Submitted by Turlough on

My thanks to you too.

It's very important not to switch off. If I was the target of the bombs I would like to think that the rest of the world is taking notice of events. It would be inhuman of them not to. And who knows who will be the next victims?

Turlough

Submitted by skinner_jennifer on

Such despair is hard to swallow. Your words send out the terror and grief those innocent victims must be feeling. 

Let us hope we never have to go through what these people are suffering.

Well put Turlough.

Jenny.

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Hello Jenny.

The nature and scale of the crimes committed against the Palestinian people are abhorrent but what equally disgusts me is the fact that there is nowhere for them to run and that most of the rest of the world is doing nothing but hiding its head in the sand and / or arming Israel to fuel the situation. In my lifetime nothing has horrified me more than this.

I’m very grateful to you for reading the poem and leaving a comment.

Turlough

Submitted by airyfairy on

And when even the most compliant start getting restive about the inconvenient dead bodies and starving kids, hey, let's go bomb somewhere else as a bit of a distraction and the latest entry in the dick-swinging competition.

Thanks for this, Turlough. As you say, who can sleep?

Submitted by Turlough on

I wrote the poem in the middle of the night because I couldn't sleep. Venting my feelings made me feel better I suppose. So now I've written a poem and I constantly remind people I know about what's going on in Gaza (and the rest) but what else can I, or anyone else who cares, do about this utterly horrific situation? The frustration and despair are doing my crust in.

Thank you very much for your comment, AF. Thank you for being one of those who cares. And thank you also for the golden cherries.  

Turlough

Submitted by airyfairy on

Passionate and intensely moving, this is our Social Media Pick of the Day. Please do share - it deserves to be as widely read as possible.

Submitted by Di_Hard on

Well Done

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Thank you Di.

Turlough

Submitted by Kilb50 on

Difficult to sleep, difficult to read about, difficult - in my case at least - to even bother writing these days as I try & comprehend that such inhumanity can take place without so much as a peep from our useless 'government'. Well done Turlough. Public Enemy No 10 indeed.

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Thanks very much for your words Kilb50.

The good thing about not being able to sleep is that I don't have the nightmares.

Turlough

Submitted by HarryC on

You've put into words something it's difficult to find words for.  I echo Kilb50's sentiments. I feel the same. When we're confronted with these daily reports and images, all it does is increase the anger, frustration, sense of helplessness.  All we hear, every day, for months, is the international community going on about the war crimes being committed, Netanyahu overstepping the line, this needs to stop... and no one does anything.  No one does a fucking thing. 

I heard a radio programme earlier, which was a recorded diary of a young Gazan woman.  Do give it a listen.  The story she relates about the man tending his garden, almost as an act of defiance - heart-rending. All this death, chaos and destruction - and this small act of beauty. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002dz3n

Submitted by Turlough on

Thanks Harry.

I feel the same way as you and Kilb50. I wrote the poem in the very early hours of this morning. Strangely I felt I had to and when I'd finished I probably felt better for around twenty minutes. So now I've got a poem but what good will it do? Who will read it other than the people who already share my point of view? What can any of us do that will make a difference? The combination of horror and frustration is unbearable.

Thanks for the link. I will certainly give it a listen. 

Good on you!

Turlough

Submitted by HarryC on

I can tell you - if I didn't have my cat, I'd be out there - doing something, somehow, whatever I could. I've been on humanitarian aid convoys before - back during the Balkans war.

Submitted by Di_Hard on

but politicians DON'T describe them as war crimes!!! Someone explained this is because as soon as it is accepted that something is a war crime, action has to be taken against the perpetrators. And no one wants to go up against Israel/America. Fine for UN to say it, as can't do anything

Do you listen to Jon Stewart Weekly?

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Hello Di.

On my Facebook page this evening I posted a clip of Starmer some years ago describing the war crimes committed during the Vukovar massacre when he was part of the legal team dealing with its aftermath. It highlights what a blinkered hypocrite he is, as are all the politicians who are in a position to be able to influence this war and others. 

I don't listen to Jon Stewart Weekly. Since leaving Britain I've tried to distance myself from British politics (one of my reasons for emigrating) but perhaps I should give him a whirl if he's covering Israel's atrocities. 

Turlough

Submitted by HarryC on

Di/Turlough,

Check out also Democracy Now! and Heather Cox Richardson. Both channels on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/@DemocracyNow

https://www.youtube.com/@heathercoxrichardson

Submitted by Turlough on

Thanks very much for the links Harry. I'll have a look at them this evening.

Turlough

Submitted by HarryC on

...and, of course, they're all TERRIFIED of the 'anti-semitism' label. The IHRA definition of anti-semitism is basically anything critical at all of the Israeli regime or Zionism.  It's crazy.  Like calling someone anti-Irish if they're critical of Catholicism or the Pope.

Submitted by Turlough on

And they forget about this definition...

Semitic people or Semites is a term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group associated with people of the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, including Akkadians, Arabs, Arameans, Canaanites and Habesha peoples. 

So technically the Israelis are anti-semites themselves. 

Turlough

Submitted by HarryC on

Precisely.  In a way, I think, it's how 'categorisations' lead to simplifications of understanding.  The way, say, 'immigrants' becomes shorthand in certain people's minds for anything other than 'human being'.

Submitted by Turlough on

I know exactly what you mean. People look at me twice when I tell them that I'm an immigrant. They imagine me to have arrived in Bulgaria on a raft from Africa when in actual fact I flew here from Manchester with Easyjet with my chattels following in a shipping container. Other immigrants here call themselves (and me) expats which drives me insane as they think it's just another word for English. 

I once heard in a conversation in a village near where I live, 'Is he an expat?' To which the reply was 'No, he's Belgian.' 

And the real definition of an expatriate is a person who lives outside their native country but with the intention to return. So that rules me out because I am here to stay.

If people spent as much time reading as they do preaching then the world would be in a better state than it is today.

Turlough

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

How ridiculous that people think you can't be an 'expat' if you're Belgian! That's just stupidity

 

Submitted by HarryC on

Agreed.  These categorisations all become meaningless over time.  And it starts with the language, of course.  The process of dehumanisation.  'Migrant', 'druggie', 'leftie', etc. It becomes easier to hate or dismiss someone if they've got a label like that.

Wholeheartely agree about reading.  Lucy Mangan wrote this piece recently in The i Paper:

'People like me tend to romanticise the novel: we think it's the greatest way of 'learning how to live', of getting inside the heads of others, of showing how language works.  How depressing then to learn from the latest annual survey by the National Literacy Trust that children's enjoyment of reading has fallen to its lowest level since records began.  Inevitable, perhaps: they're too distracted by all the messages, videos and games on their screens.  What gets me, though, is the number of digital sophisticates who don't see this as a tragedy.  Fear not, they say: the shift from paper to interactive screens is just progress - akin to 'printing making scribes redundant.'  No.  Books have a power not just as a store of accumulated wisdom, but as physical objects.  Their pages light up the same parts of the brain maps do.  Studies show that when we read from them, we engage more deeply and retain more information for longer than when scanning screen images.  I can only pity the digital natives who do not know what joys their disjointed state of being leaves for ever out of reach.'

Well said!  It's why I think letting children - at least before 16 - have smartphones is absolutely disastrous.  I read recently that more and more teachers at entry stage in primary school are saying that children are starting without a clue how to use a book - page-turning instead of swiping.  And my two great-nephews - both very bright lads - started at university last year.  I wanted to get them books each for their first year, so asked my niece for suggestions.  She said 'They don't read books much.'  It was as much as I could do to ask 'Then what the hell are they going to university for?'  And 'progress' is another use of a word that's become distorted to mean 'moving forwards'. 'Progress' has positive and optimistic connotations.  What we're experiencing isn't anything of the kind.

I know I bang on a lot about this stuff, and people retort that it's all over-hyped and a moral panic and all that.  But look what happened with social media, and no one expected that, either.

Submitted by Turlough on

Very well said Harry. I agree with every word of yours and of Lucy Mangan's. Bang on all you like to me. It's always refreshing to hear from people who are on my wavelength.

'But we need this technology if society is going to advance' is what my kids and their partners tell me, showing pity to this foot-dragging old fool. But they are desperately wrong and I pity them.

I can't wait for the day that the world runs out of electricity. I'm pretty sure that my partner and I will cope with the situation far better than they do.

Turlough

Submitted by HarryC on

'Advance' is another 'progress'. All it really means in that context is 'going forward' - because you can't go back.  It's the 'inevitability' fatalism that Tristan Harris refers to in that video. 

The 'Leave The World Behind' scenario is all too relevant.  Have you seen it?  It's a 'disaster' movie that left a lot of younger generations scratching their heads.  But I think a lot of them missed the true 'disaster' that it was all about.  What happens when the networks go down?  And they will.  One of the major frontlines in future wars with be with hybrid warfare.  You won't need nukes to bring a country to its knees. If utilities, banking, transportation and food supply chains - all controlled online now - are taken out, we're stuffed.  'Checkmate on humanity', as Harris has said.

(A cheeky plug - did you read my recent piece 'The Erosion of Choice'?  Should be on your wavelength!)

Submitted by Di_Hard on

He is American. It's brilliant, Try it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBak_jde6Yg&ab_channel=TheWeeklyShowwith...

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Thanks Di. I'll have a listen this evening.

Turlough

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