THE DEAD NO LONGER NEED TO BE BROUGHT HOME | WHO SAID THE TIMES ARE ALL DARK? | HERE WE ARE, THE BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR | NO BOMBTIME STORIES FOR GAZA’S CHILDREN

THE DEAD NO LONGER NEED TO BE BROUGHT HOME

Greetings Sisters, Brothers, Comrades,

Today is May 19th – the birthday of three iconic revolutionary ancestors – Malcolm X, Yuri Kochiyama, and Ho Chi Minh.
I am currently writing about how I was honored to meet the first two.
However today, faced with the reality of the genocide in Gaza and the death by incarceration challenging the lives of our aging political prisoners – my two poems are about saving the living because the dead have left this lifework to us.
Peace,
Julia

“The only accounts we owe are to the ancestors, our children and those not yet born”
Amilcar Cabral

“Each dawn the dead walk by our side”
Amilcar Cabral

“It is the hour of the furnaces, we only see the light”
Che Guevara

To all the political prisoners we have yet to bring home – Mumia, Leonard, Kamau, Fred, Kevin Joy, Imam Jamil Al Amin and the others …

mama Assata Shakur
and
baba Dhoruba Bin Wahad
told us
not to mobilize around our dead
but
to organize around the names
of those who can still be saved

our dead
alive and kickin’ in our minds
no longer need
to be brought
back home

the made-in-Israel
U.S- abetted
genocide
livestreamed hour by hour
into our heads
will not make us fall
into the abyss
of their death algorithms
but
we will focus on the numbers
of children, women and men
in Gaza
we can rescue
still breathing
from the mass graves

the dead
unshackled at last
have become the ancestors
to whom we owe
the account
of how many lives we save

our children
are those watching us
win back lives
and they are taking notes

those yet unborn
will learn
the History of Liberation
we produced with our hands
and it will be our turn
to walk unshackled
by their side

(c) Julia Wright. May 19 2024. All Rights.

 

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WHO SAID THE TIMES ARE ALL DARK?

who said the times are all dark
and nothing but stark ?

who said
those who want death
and more death
can snuff out
our lit hope ?

who said there
is no sheer joy
when a single child
survives
and smiles ?

who said
we cannot marvel
when students raise their fists
and turn their backs
on the U.S. President –
all for Gaza
in Martin Luther King’s
alma mater ?

who says
the university encampments
will not spill over
and spread ?

who says
we cannot cross
the crime scene tape
in Palestine
and show
the naked evidence
of U.S. bombs
serial numbers and all
left behind
in the telltale rubble ?

who says
we are not mapping
genocide
aforethought
from
Frantz Fanon’s ecologically poisoned Martinique
to Patrice Lumumba’s Congo ?

who says
we do not know
we have the People’s wind
in our sails ?

(c) Julia Wright. May 21 2024. All Rights Reserved.

 

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HERE WE ARE , THE BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR

from the human targets of genocide to the executioners

the sky’s the limit
to what you
do to us
yet here we are
the bright and morning star

the sky’s the limit
to the genocide
you pay billions for
yet our destruction
is not mere merchandise
that can be bought
or bartered for

your hubris
and delusions
are flailing
and failing to fly high
in the sky –
nor can they escape
the poetic justice
of a legion of children
flying flocks
of ancestral kites
way past
your iron dome

as the People’s sun rises
you will awaken
with your wax-winged drones
in meltdown
free falling
crashing
on the hot bed of rubble
you made
for yourselves

the sky’s the limit
to what you
do to us
yet here we are
the bright and morning star

(c) Julia Wright. May 24, 2024. All Rights Reserved to playgroundsforpalestine.org

 

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NO BOMBTIME STORIES FOR GAZA’S CHILDREN

 

where are you now
little girl
who
when i last saw you
cried out
you did not understand
and
you wanted your legs back ?

where are you now
you little girl
who with your hands
pressing
your hollow cheeks
you had no more mirror
to look at
said :
the war has made me ugly

where are you all now
so many genocide days later
anonymous
and
off screen ?

where are you now
you little girl
blinded by shrapnel
telling the journalist :
as you can see
we are being sniped
what have we done
why is this happening to us ?

where are you
all the children in Gaza
who find the words
to say
they would rather be martyred –
where are they ?

whether they are still
wounded children without surviving parents
or
baby ancestors –
may they have
food
and homes
and legs
and eyes
and mirrors
to see how beloved they are
and
only kitetime stories
to tell themselves
when it grows dark

(c) Julia Wright. May 24, 2024.