FIRE AND ICE(CREAM)

Aaron Bushnell, moments before he self-immolated outside the Israeli Embassy in protest of Gaza genocide.

the eyes are the window of the soul
old adage

lounging on
the White House terrace
one balmy
Monday morning
Genocide Joe
was licking
his after breakfast
ice cream
when a slight breeze
blew
a piece of ash
into his eye

Oh my
Oh my
did he cry :
this hurts
this burns
I am in tears
I am blind
call a nurse
to remove
this cinder
from my eye

sir,
the nurse said,
this is not a cinder
the wind has blown
into your eye –
this comes from the charred remains
of a manchild
who self immolated
almost under your window
to protest
your mega bombfire
annihilating
Palestine

craven Nero
simply continues
to lick his ice cream

will a trendy new flavor
be named
after the massacre of Rafah
that is his dream ?

a wind is rising
a People’s wind
so strong
that it will carry
all the ashes from Gaza burning
into
the windows of the West’s
sickening soul

AFTER A POEM UNREAD

to Tone, Tag, Santiago, Gabe, Sophia, Kevin, Raven, Verbena, Sarah ,Clara , Antonella… and the younger generations in our campaign I have not named

to my biological children and grandchildren and great grand children

my son
said to me :
this New Year
i want no gift
just
a story

Refaat Alareer
said
in his youth
he would hunger
after his grandmother’s stories
more than
the meagre food
his grandfather brought back

please do not wait
for those of us
who are elders
to join the ancestors
to ask us for our stories

please invite me
to your kitchen table
so that you can partake
of my tales of struggle
before they grow cold
and they become
legacy

i promise
the hope watering
food
i will bring
will be cooked
with Revolutionary Love
and i will share
the recipe

SELF-DELETION

an article published by the Intercept today called “Aaron Bushnell who self-immolated for Palestine had grown deeply disillusioned with the military” was written drawing on his own posts that have now been predictably deleted.

he was fast running out of money
even Uber Eats would not have him
and he could get
neither stimulus
nor unemployment
and was out of time

as is the case
with so many kids,
the military
was on the rebound

but
his heart
was intelligent enough
to understand
that what he got intelligence clearance for
made him complicit
in a genocidal war crime

he charted his disillusion
in post
after post
and even wrote :
“whiteness erases culture”
knowing full well
his posts
would be deleted

he loudly and proudly
stated his message
and
deleted himself

[NO NAME]

and
what if we have now
waited too long
and the word
genocide
has become obsolete ?

what if we have reached
the timeslip forward
where the word
genocide
can no longer coincide
with the real meaning
of bombs exploding
the people of Palestine
into human rubble ?

what if on the ground
annihilation
is beyond the barrier of sound
of the words
usually used to say it ?

what if
the word genocide
has become
a euphemism ?

what if
what Palestine
is living through
is no longer the dictionary
or Genocide Convention
definition of the term
but beyond what can be shown
and seen

what did Aaron Bushnell
see
that he could not unsee
but still
had to show us
through the flames
of self-immolation ?

what do his quickly
washed away remains
tell us about
a charred truth
his learned language
could
no longer
even
name ?

Fighting Words

Journal of the Communist Workers league

FIRE AND ICE(CREAM) | AFTER A POEM UNREAD | SELF-DELETION | No Name – a poem

Poems by renowned Black leader and activist Julia Wright