FROM ZERO TO INFINITY

” There is nobody
to watch the kitten playing
with the willow tip “
Haiku by Richard Wright

in algebra class
when we were children
we always marveled
that minus multiplied by minus
could equal
a plus

today
we are in awe
when we are told
that a few fistfuls
of bomb-scorched grass
added to
do-it-yourself desalinated
Gaza water
equals
a recipe for life

during a short-lived truce
a child smiling
and mustering hope
asked us
to listen
to the absence
of planes

today
we watch
another child
limbless
on Gaza beach
play football
with ineffable grace

today
yet another child stands
sobbing
watching her smoldering house
where a shred of door
bearing a lock
still stands –
and she asks for the
key
as a keepsake –
the white hot multiplication sign
of a home
to be reclaimed

WHAT IS HOPE TO ME?

is hope
an opium
one can overdose
on ?

is hope
the adult version
of a child’s
magical thought ?

is hope
the Houdini coin
found
behind the ear of
my Blues ?

is hope
the time lapse
from seed to flower
in Mother Earth’s
garden ?

is hope
an infinity
of chances
as endless
as the stars ?

is hope
a longing
to manifest
what never was ?

is hope
the future
transformed
into reclaimed land ?

is hope
the murdered poet’s kite
piercing
the iron dome ?

is hope
the ghost
of an ancestral smile ?

is hope
that candle
still burning
when night ends
at last ?

RADICAL DIAGNOSIS

to Amilcar Cabral and Kwame Nkrumah in gratitude for their camaraderie and the lessons they taught us still valid today

Amilcar Cabral’s foundational speech “The Cancer of Betrayal” delivered at Kwame Nkrumah’s funeral can still be found on the internet.

lumbering and spent
a patient
dragged himself
into the doctor’s office
to hear his diagnosis

his body
once tall and proud
is broken and bent

his eyes are blood-shot
and his Black skin
has turned gray

the doctor
looks at the X-ray
and reads
the blood test
and lets his patient know
the cells in his body
are in mutiny
and have risen
against the militancy
of his immune system

the doctor explains
the cells have formed factions
and sects
with a will to power
of their own
thus weakening
the vital resistance
of the organs
that keep him alive
and capable of winning

the doctor gently lets his patient know
the invasive cells
have taken over
his body’s temple
disrupting interconnection
and
going amok

what is the name
of this disease,
asked the patient
who wrote after his name
the letters LM
for
Liberation Movement ?

the doctor whose name
was
Amilcar Cabral
replied :
you are suffering from
the cancer of betrayal

what is the cure
asked
the ailing Liberation Movement ?

Cabral
wrote a prescription for :
a careful choice of leaders
a definition of the role arms play
a daily pulse-taking of the class struggle
and
the healthy indispensable role of the heart –
the People

MAY THEY REST IN PALESTINE, RIP

“Where is our collective heart ?”
Alice Walker

the IOF tries to hide
the number
but
we know
five children
will be murdered
either by bombing
or through malnutrition
and medical neglect
in Palestine
by the time
you read these lines

with
day in
and
day out
false news about the casualties,
our very sense of time
is being twisted
and eroded

far away
from the non existent tape
of
scene-of-crime-do-not-cross,
in the air-conditioned chambers
of the International Criminal Court,
eminent Q.C.’s
sat for decades
away from
ongoing
mass death on the ground

while ancient hands
slowly moved
on roman figured clocks,
they split hairs deciding
if it is
to be or not to be
genocide
as they know it –
finally playing it safe
and calling for arrest warrants
only if there are reasonable grounds
for war crimes and crimes against humanity
against both sides

while too many prevaricating Hamlets
guilt ridden but too late
by the rot in their own complicit state
lean on the props
of well polished plastic skulls
and declaim
discourses about niceties
about words to avoid
numbered clauses
alineas
annexes
a’s
b’s
and c’s –
meanwhile
made-in-USA fragmentation bombs
and Artificial Intelligence targeting
punctually
make their point

and
if it were not for
our collective heart
and our
global People’s footprints
relentlessly maintained,
our real-time sense of time
would be
subjected to the ether of
denial
distraction
disinformation
and
the dollar-light savings
of a soul-numbing
time lag

may the five children
who have died
as i write this
rest
In a Palestine at long last free

RIP

ACACIA MEMORY

To Reverend Doctor Mary Olson

To the children of the descendants of the 1919 Elaine Massacre who tend to the Memorial Willow for Silas Hoskins and all the others lynched.

and

To DD who wrote “I trust the acacia memory will keep you shaded”

the other day
in hot mid-Summer
i watched
my beloved acacia tree
become an ancestor

it had been an old friend
taking me through
the pandemic lockdown
with the projection of freshness
and canopy
on my balcony

it was at least centenarian
planted before
the comprador rise of condos
all around
and the building
right nearby
of a manicured swimming pool
for tourism
and golden carefree children

slowly
ever so slowly
the canary-in-the-mine-shaft tree
started to sicken –
attacked by the chlorine gases
rising
from the sterile turquoise-tinted
waters
and the season upon season
spread of mildew
eating away
its healing yellow flowers

the gardeners
of the pesticide perfected park
gave it one last year
before putting it down
and when they came
they were clinically armed
with loud mechanical machetes
gloves
and visors
and the execution
took three long hours
from branch to branch
limb to limb
down to the trunk
so deeply sunk
it could not be pulled
and the roots held hard

i went to the gravesite
of the tree
that became an ancestor
under my eyes
and near the hardly congealed
reddish sap of the stump
that did not give up
i planted a haiku-seed
to reclaim the space
where a new sapling
will spread re-membered shade
and
continue the fight

Fighting Words

Journal of the Communist Workers league

FROM ZERO TO INFINITY | WHAT IS HOPE TO ME? | RADICAL DIAGNOSIS | MAY THEY REST IN PALESTINE, RIP | ACACIA MEMORY