Our children are waiting

Fishermen along the Egyptian coast near Gaza's border fill bottles with just enough grains and seeds so they will float and reach the shores of Gaza — Fishermen along the Egyptian coast near Gaza’s border fill bottles with just enough grains and seeds so they will float and reach the shores of Gaza. | Photo: Middle East Monitor

“We must act as if we answer to, and only answer to, our Ancestors, our children, and the unborn.”
— Amilcar Cabral

two generations ago
already
George Jackson
told us
fascism is already here –
did we hear?

Lynne Stewart
spoke of
the twilight of evil –
did we see?

Antonio Gramsci
let us know that
when the old world refuses to leave
and
the new world is slow to arrive
there is a betweenness
where monsters are born

Frantz Fanon
gave us the weapon
to defeat
the colonial monster
curled up
in our minds

we will not dignify
the abyss
with too long a stare
because our children
and the children of our children
stand ancestrally ready
on the other side

THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAIL

Humpty Dumpty had a bad fall
All the King’s horses
And all the King’s men
could not put him together again

Old Nursery Rhyme

the adage says
the devil
is in the detail

Le Pen
the French neo nazi
who tortured in Algeria
used to quip
that concentration camps
were only
a detail of history

today
there is no detail too insignificant
on the ground
in Gaza
for those
who live through
the ticking time torture
of random death
around the corner

those details
tell bit by bit
labored breath by labored breath
the story
of the steadfast will
to return home

those details
are shared by the starving journalists
in Gaza
assassinated
for the right
to report on their own genocide

those details
are Anas al-Sharif’s dying moments
as his body
is still in flames

those details
are the seemingly banal seconds
a little girl takes
to collect desalinated water –
a child
whose name
Amna al- Mufti
is not a detail to be forgotten
when pschitt …
as if the game-sick IOF soldiers wanted
to create a magic puff of smoke
they blow her up
while faraway
we sleep

those details
are Time
measured in blood
as Bisan
lets us know
when she reappears
to tell us brightly
I am still alive

those details
are revealed
in the specific choice of words
as when Israeli soldiers
on entering Gaza
say
they feel like God

those details
are revealed
in a slip of the tongue
when the former US ambassador to the UN
mentioned her government
would see
to …oops…a terminal solution
on the ground

those details
are the sudden sense
of bullets ripping through
the flesh of each new day
and
of survival for minutes
turned into
years

those details
are the mere mention
of Refaat Alareer’s single marker
and Yahya Sinwars’ thrown stick

those details
are the haircracks in the rubble
through which
newborns are heard
dying

those details
are the fierceness of tiny seeds
planted
in an ancestral grove
invisible to the genocidal eye

those details
are the stuff
of precisely numbered exhibits
in the People’s Courts

inspite of all King Goliath’s horses
and all King Goliath’s men
inspite of all King Goliath’s killing machines
supplied by his western allies led by the USA –
those details
of ethnic cleansing aforethought
and self-praise after acts of genocide
will not downsize
a high tide worldwide –
the towering waves of streets
and villages
rising up
for a Palestine
liberated
from imperialist occupation and Apartheid
olive tree by olive tree, ruin by ruin,
grave by grave
reclaimed home by reclaimed home

the ancestral blessing
is
in the detail
of
Gaza’s resistance

POETRY IN A BOTTLE

the fishermen
along the Egyptian coast
near Gaza’s border
know how to fill bottles
with just enough grains and seeds
so they will float
and reach the shores of Gaza

the People of Egypt
need no algorithm
to gauge the currents
so the bottles they send
will not get lost

that is poetry
to me –
filling the page
with just enough words
and rhyme
and hope
so they will arrive
at the destination
of the mind
that hungers for them

AS JOURNALISM LIES DYING

sober
unadorned
striking
and
black …

no,
it is not
the little black dress
of Audrey Hepburn
in
Breakfast at Tiffany

no,
it is not
a pair of priceless
dark pearl earrings

no
it is not
a sleek tinted limousine

it is
the world over
from Belgium to France
from Lebanon to Spain
the front page
of hundreds of newspapers
in mourning
for the Gaza journalists
assassinated
because they were bearing testimony
to their own genocide

ECOLOGY OF LOVE (6)- a poem for Gaza

“I have seen seeds make their way out of concrete,” Sansour says. “I have seen people come out of rubble, and I have saved my own seeds in ashes, and I have seen life insisting on itself — not because of us but despite us.”
Vivien Sansour
Founder of the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Library

the car a bomb destroyed
can still serve
as a four poster caved-in bed
where a Palestinian child
can fall asleep
and dream

two cans
emptied of its rancid beans
can still serve as makeshift
shoes
against the burning sand

olive trees
are uprooted by the IDF
because they are said
to be a security threat
but
their roots pining for the stolen land
their gnarled trunks as dry
as the hands that last harvested them
they are replanted

although the rubble
is a stony womb,
the children of Gaza
can still be reborn
from cracks in
their home turned tomb

in Gaza
the Ecology of Love
is everywhere

Fighting Words

Journal of the Communist Workers league

Our children are waiting | The devil is in the detail | Poetry in a bottle | As journalism lies dying | Ecology of love (6) – a poem for Gaza

Poems by renowned Black leader and activist Julia Wright