The Devil’s in the Genocide

” Concentration camps ? They are a detail of history “.
Jean -Marie Le Pen, French neo nazi leader who tortured in Algeria

“The devil is in the detail “
Old adage

it is the details
we will remember

an Egyptian man
throws oranges
into an aid truck
heading for Rafah

children in Gaza
sleeping with their shoes on
always to be ready

children save their beloved cats
begging them
not to eat them if they don’t survive
and meanwhile the same children
eat mice
rather than die

hot water
poured over grass
is a soup

a child carries
his dead baby brother
in a blue duffle bag

a little girl
recognizes her mother
by her hair

no frozen slope
no sledges –
the collapsed roof of
a destroyed mosque
is good enough
to surf
on anxiety
before the next snowfall
of phosphorous

the devil is in the genocide

Our Shared Breath for Gaza

A contribution to be read at the Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of Palestinian International Prisoners Day organized by Detroit Jericho on April 17th 2024.

the blood choke
the IOF officers
taught our police
did not take our shared breath away

that ancestral breath
comes from so far back
that it gives each Indigenous child
from Gaza to the US of A
the wisdom of an elder

each poem is a breath held
then exhaled
not to be quelled

each poem
is part of a flock
of our teacher’s kites –
birds of a brilliant
resilient feather
flying together
throughout the world

each poem
is a slow motion firework
piercing the Iron Dome –
a flying star
the hollow cheeked children of Palestine
have made a wish upon

each poem
echoes the cheers of the People of Gaza
watching the drones
of the Axis of Resistance
flying over
the Mosque of Al Alqsa

the wind blowing
through all of us
is
a Poetic Intifada

Kaleidoscoping the Paradigm

the pandemic came
and stayed
endemically
with too many dead
to mourn
even till today –
changing the paradigm

the lynching
of George Floyd
was caught
in timed real time
on all the screens of our lockdown
as he died second by second
of a blood choke
first tested on the Palestinians
then taught around the world
by the soldiers
of Israel –
yet again changing the paradigm

October 7th
took place
such a long six months ago –
a People’s uprising
a movement of liberation
against the same soldiers
who kill two Gazans with one stone
using an ancestral people as guinea pigs
while committing the genocide
that will allow access to the gas offshore –
and the paradigm changed once more

April 13th
still reverberates
with the slow moving shooting stars
of drones and missiles
letting Israel know
that
the paradigm has now forever changed
and each day of hubris
will be punished
not by highfalutin Greek Gods
but by the Love Supreme
of the marching People

Each Red Sunrise is Dripping Gaza

each red sunrise
is dripping
Gaza

each dripping sunrise
behind the Empire State
throws a dark shadow
thousands of miles away
in Palestine

and my mind is Black and Blue
and i take my bruised soul
by the scruff of the neck
seeking the healing space
where a killed poet’s kite
finds asylum
in a poem

each red sunrise
is dripping
Gaza

thousands of miles away
in Palestine
a deranged IOF soldier
inside
the hollow shell of the school
he just destroyed
teaches
an equation
to a class of little ghosts
in empty chairs –
” What is the value of X”
he asks imperiously
and the students he blew away
give no answer *

little does the demented soldier
know
that X
is the resilience
of the human factor

little does this human robot
know
how we teach
our ecology of love
and how we grow
crops of Resistance
in the ancestral garden
we tend to
in the sanctuary
of our persistence

little does this military dunce
know
he cannot solve the equation
of Liberation

everywhere
the red sun rises
it is dripping
Gaza

Fighting Words

Journal of the Communist Workers league

The Devil’s in the Genocide | Our Shared Breath for Gaza | Kaleidoscoping the Paradigm | Each Red Sunrise is Dripping Gaza

Poems by renowned Black leader and activist Julia Wright