Applause.
Applause.
We applaud everything these days.
We celebrate everything –
prayers,
murders,
our fifteen minutes of fame,
our otherwise
mundane lives,
the sacred…
and the
profane.
We applaud presidents and beggars,
saints and sinners…
alike.
We applaud talk-show hosts
and headline-news makers.
We applaud clergymen,
and rock-n-roll stars.
We applaud dead Palestinian kids –
We applaud the stones they throw.
We applaud the stench of the blood they shed -
theirs, the enemy’s.
Everything.
Everything.
We applaud everything.
Everything has become a show to us these days.
Life itself has become nothing more but
a cheap soap
opera of sorts,
a continuous
celebration of our banality,
and moral cowardice.
And heaven only knows how guilty I am.
Heaven only know how hard and loud
I, too, applaud.
May 2001