A NEW PALESTINIAN FRONT

Mass grave of victims of Zionist genocide in Gaza.

” If you stare into the abyss, the abyss will stare back at you “
Nietzche

the opened mass graves
in Gaza
are the abyss
we are made
to stare into

some run
amok
go blind

others like
the brave among the brave
of our children
look the abyss in the eye
and defiant
rather than
give up the dream of their ancestors
are creating
liberated zones
on the Ivy League enclaves
that were Indigenous land
once free

meanwhile our police
taught by the mass grave diggers
from Israel
in cop cities
throughout the US of A
carry the darkness of the abyss
in their demented eye
as they taser
their own peacefully dissenting
daughters and sons

will we wait
for
the first casualty
on this new Palestinian front
to be announced ?

BALLAD FOR PANTHER MAMAS WHO WERE NOT THERE

we so wanted
to march
and chant
and celebrate
your Birthday,
Mumia,
we the Panther Mamas
who could not travel

we would have come
with our canes
our walkers
our ailments
our confiscated passports
if we had been able

let’s say their names

mama Assata Shakur
who reminded us
that the dead could wait
to be celebrated
because it is the living
who still need saving

we say her name

mama Charlotte O’Neal
all the way from Tanzania
who would have danced
and sung
and regaled us
with her feisty wisdom

we say her name

mama Kathleen Cleaver
who with Emory and Eldridge
invited me
to translate for them
at the first Cultural Pan African Festival
in Algiers
where we spoke long hours
with the African liberation movements
high up
in the Casbah
while Mumia
reported on Panther internationalism
back home

we say her name

i even took out paper and pencil
to figure out what it would cost
for a two way plane ticket
for me and a nurse
but found
i was out of pocket
so i had to forget about
joining y’all
and visiting, you,
Mumia

instead
i sign my name
to these Birthday words

LOVE IS THEIR FOREIGN COUNTRY

the imperialists
of the Global North
with the help of Israel
and Middle East client states
crave
the oil, the gas
and the shipping routes
of Palestine –
but beyond this
illicit wealth
those who
recycled the creme de la creme
nazis
after the holocaust
crave
a mineral
even more difficult
to find,
a rare metal
more precious
than the coltane
from the Congolese mines –
the People’s ability to Love

in their narcissism
the vampires realize that
this treasure of Love
that keeps slipping
from their grasping hand
is already their loss –
so they invent surrogates
and love robots
with soaring IQ’s
imitating
the perfection of affection

they send to Gaza
drones
beaming the automated voices
of desperate mothers
and children wailing for help
because they think
they can draw out
of the shelters
the members
of the rest of the family
who will rush to help
out of Love –
Love that foreign thing
they have studied
under their microscope

they throw
the tortured and the executed
into mass graves
in the cynical hope
that the loving families
searching for their dead
will taint their crime scene
beyond investigation

and
in their demonic mind,
no grave diggers
are needed
since anonymous bodies thrown
by the wayside
are buried by strangers
in an act
of Love Supreme

part of their torture
is to weaponize
what they cannot capture
against those
marked for genocide

but
little do the occupiers understand
that
Love is a foreign country
they will fail to
conquer
whatever high tech weapons
they try desperately
to muster

Love is a native land
unassailable

Fighting Words

Journal of the Communist Workers league

A NEW PALESTINIAN FRONT | BALLAD FOR PANTHER MAMAS WHO WERE NOT THERE | LOVE IS THEIR FOREIGN COUNTRY

Poems by renowned Black leader and activist Julia Wright