WORD-STONE THROWING

United Nations relief agency under attack in Gaza..

“Why not die fighting … If this is a theme …”
Words pronounced by Refaat Alareer at the
end of a class where he was teaching Susan
Abulhawa’s “Wala” – two years before he was
murdered by the IDF

“Where is our collective heart ?”
Alice Walker

at their UNRWA school
the children were taught
Jack and the Beanstalk
and listening
to the Ogre chant :
we will grind your bones
to make our bread
they understood
what the ABC
of white supremacy
was all about

no need for indoctrination –
the very grammar of western fairy tales
took their innocence away

no need for trumped-up charges
of UNRWA subversion –
the cancer of betrayal
begins within
the accuser’s culture
of craven occupation

should we then be surprised
that the children of Palestine
tired of building
ever collapsing
dust castles in the rubble
squeezed the grit hard
in their tiny bleeding palms
and hurled the bloodstones
of their stolen dreams
at the Ogres
living out of bounds
beyond the beanstalk
of an Iron Dome ?

should we be surprised
that a butterfly ripple away
a manchild in Mali
West Africa
downed a French plane
with his toy stone-thrower –
just for play ?

should we be surprised
these stories are
the stuff of an ancestrally
reinvented
Global South
Poetic Intifada ?

should we be surprised
that the storytellers of Gaza
teach their young students
to throw handfuls of wordstones
over crumbling walls
beyond dying cultures
ceasing all fires
except those burning
in our collective heart ?

BIBI, KAPO-IN-CHIEF

for my mother’s family gone up in smoke
for Silas Hoskins, Richard’s Uncle, lynched with no body returned
for all the dead through genocide in Gaza

i had thought
the Holocaust
that decimated
my mother’s family
had been laid
to rest

i had thought
we had neatly gone
through the five stages
of mourning
explored by Kubler Ross

i had thought
our claim to Never Again
over there
had been vindicated
and i could now focus
on preventing
the Black and Indigenous genocides
also unfolding
over here
against my ancestral roots
since before the plantation

i had thought
oh,
i had thought …

but since the 7th of October –
abetted
by the craven greed of the USA,
enabled
by the twisted guilt of Germany
and the other Lady Macbeths
of the West,
Netanyahu
flexes his flabby muscles
and plays the arch villain
in the last doomed
portrayal
of the maddened
bloodthirsty Kapo
he is

and now i understand –
not only are genocides interconnected,
they will be
in continuum
until
digging below the soil
of prefabricated narrative
we find the polluted aquifer
of imperialist meaning
that links them all

BATTLE-TESTED

today
baby lizards
are born senescent
and
if their species is not protected
butterflies struggle
to survive

the assault
on Mother Earth,
the cruel battering
of animals and insects
by inhumane
corporation-promoted
climate change
makes us check
the labels of big pharma,
pesticides
fertilizers
and our very food
to make sure
they were not
animal-tested

today
in Gaza
Artificial time-saving Intelligence
to locate
“power targets”
( the code used for civilian population ),
the latest model of
threat- screaming
and
bomb-noise simulating
drones,
the state of the art QR twisted technology
and
USA-made cluster bombing planes
not to speak of white phosphorous
Arkansas-mined bio weapons
are
now all arrogantly labeled
battle-tested
and as such
will be sold
to complicit governments
with value-added blood money tax

the people of Gaza
the zionists call
human animals
are
the guinea pigs
of an automated mass genocide
to be exported elsewhere
at a proof-is-in-the-pudding-of-death
multi billionnaire profit
but
we refuse to allow our governments
to be
necrophiliac consumers
battening on the battle-tested
merchandize
that is decimating
the people of Gaza

after all
who are the cannibals ?

Exposed : Israel’s Mass Civilian Killing Machine / Double Down News / February 5 2024/

WORD-RUN

to Grandpa Wilson, Richard Wright’s grandfather
In gratitude to Thich Nhat Hanh for his meditation “Stop Running and be healed”

day into night
night into day
i run and run
and keep running
and cannot stop

i run to try
to stop
the bombs
my country sends
to battle-test
on my brothers and sisters
in Gaza
i run to pass the torch
i run
to kindle even a glimmer of light
in the darkness
i run
to prevent a child
from going blue
under the rubble
i run
i run
even in my dreams
i run

who will stop me
who will tell me I can go to sleep
who will let me know
i can at last
let go ?

and then
Thay gently murmurs :
perhaps your parents
and the parents of your parents
were always
running too

and then
i remember –
i am the great granddaughter,
of Grandpa Wilson
the old gaunt runaway slave
who taught Richard
that a home run
could be achieved
with
Words

Fighting Words

Journal of the Communist Workers league

WORD-STONE THROWING | BIBI, KAPO-IN-CHIEF | BATTLE-TESTED | WORD-RUN

Poems by renowned Black leader and activist Julia Wright