How dare you, Palentir?

in a half dream
i was holding high
into the sky
not the butterfly net
i left somewhere
in an attic
but a word catcher
out to collect
species
of nouns we need
to protect

how dare you
Palentir
rob us of
the ancestral
herbal signifier
of calm
of rest
of happiness –
the word Lavender –
to label
the algorithm
of your Killing List –
unless
you interpret its latin root
literally
as
lavendum
“to be cleansed”?

Lavender belongs to us

how dare you
Palentir
call your AI multi profit program
following fathers home
to assassinate them there
using the children’s poignant cry
“Where is Daddy”
when the real meaning of fatherhood
is lost barbarically
in translation
and
you ban the media
and the dictionaries
where the word Love
would condemn
your genocide ?

Our Fathers and Forefathers belong to us

how dare you
Palentir
reduce
our flyaway wings
to numbers
and hope
to get away with it?

we always knew where the hole was
in the Iron Dome

LETTER OF LOVE TO THE EVERGLADES CROCODILES

Everglade crocodiles,
in your innocence
you will be protected
from the illegal invasion
of prison builders
and ICE guards

you will be protected
from the real immigrants
into your peaceful homeland –
the armed United States military

you will not allow
your Everglades
to become stolen land

you will ally
with the Florida Panthers
and the bears
and the wading birds
as you swim vigil

even though
the man from the White House
has knighted the leather
of your prized skin
with ICE caps

even though
he has
recruited you
in his sick head
to be the guards
of yet another concentration camp

even though
he jokes that the jailed immigrants
in Alligator Alcatraz
will have to swim in zig zag
to get away
and even then
only one percent
he brags
would escape your lethal jaws

even though
he laughs
till he sheds crocodile tears
of jollity
at the fantasy

you will be saved
you will be saved
alongside tribes and tribes of homeless humans
hunted like wildlife

you will be saved
by the Miccosukee
and
Seminole
and
the support of all Indigenous Tribes

THE AUTOIMMUNE SICKNESS OF ZIONISM

“when like the human animals they are
they flock to the false troughs
we set up,
you are to shoot
at those
who must not take our food
our oil our gas
our potential real estate
you are to eliminate
those who must not exist”
says
the IDF
to their soldiers

the soldiers
who at the so-called aid sites
report
shooting
into
crowds of Palestinians
say
the people they see everyday
up close
are no enemy
have no weapons
and
are no threat
unless
hunger is a crime

these soldiers
simply
for reporting the truth
have become
criminals
who in turn
must cease to exist

an ailing zionist army
is fighting
an autoimmune sickness

INNOCENCE ISN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE

innocence is not
what it used to be

innocence
was
that word
the poets used to use
to rhyme
with transparence
and a refusal
of silence

but
the notion of
innocence
has undergone
a political climate change
since
Nuremberg
when
not knowing about the camps
was not a defense

yesterday’s innocence
is
losing its mass
melting
as arctic ice

innocence
is
no longer
a rock solid shield
sanctifying the democratized acceptance
of genocide

when the glaciers
of innocence
dissolve
under the heat of bunker cluster bombs,
the debris and corpses
of denial
frozen beneath
are revealed

Gaza is the everlasting amber
protecting the steadfastness
we find under the disappearing ice
of each and every one
of our globally warming minds

Our only innocence now
is
hands on
day to day
hour to hour
to Free Palestine

I SIT HERE IN FULL DAYLIGHT, BLIND

To Mumia

To those marching for Mumia in Philly today

” Our political prisoners suffer from cookie cutter torture”
Ericka Payne

” There is concern for Abu-Jamal’s physical integrity”
2021 letter from the UN Working Group of Experts for Peoples of African Descent to the US government

there are all shades
of blindness

there is your
failing eyesight,
Mumia,
there was your’s,
Leonard,
in the cookie cutter torture
of dungeons
where the physical integrity
of the body
is under cruel and inhuman
absence of scrutiny

there is the self-willed blindness
to the Truth
of your innocence
chosen by those who stand to lose
by staring it in the face

then
there is the inability to see –
the blindness of the absent
who like me
yearn to march
and rally
this weekend in July
to commemorate
the date
when you Mumia were criminally
sentenced to die

those who are at a distance
attempt to remotely visualize
the dust
the heat
the watermelon
the honks
the banners
the flyers
the street rags
and the rage and love
rising into the skies

i sit here
in full daylight
blind
trying to find the words,
the beat
to follow
in an imagined dance

wait for me
i am not far behind

Fighting Words

Journal of the Communist Workers league

How dare you, Palentir? | Letter of love to the Everglades crocodiles | The autoimmune sickness of Zionism | Innocence isn’t what it used to be | I sit here in full daylight, blind

Poems by renowned Black leader and activist Julia Wright

HOW DARE YOU, PALENTIR?