The poetic contraband of Refaat Alareer | What is Sumud to me? | Zionist madness turns inwards | After the March for Mumia

The poetic contraband of Refaat Alareer – a commemoration poem

In prison
love is contraband
love is the acid
that eats away all bars.

Assata Shakur RIP

Against a loveless world.

Susan Abulhawa

 

if i were in Gaza
i would
lay down on your grave
a small flask of
pungent olive oil
and a leather bag
of fragrant zaatar
both as contraband
to the zionists
as your poetry continues
to be

a contraband they crave

i would add to
the offering
a handful
of your favorite strawberry seeds
and
these words
flown with love –
the love those who killed you
are incapable of
the love without which
poetry
would not exist

(c) Julia Wright December 6, 2025. All Rights Reserved to what remains of Refaat Alareer’s family

 

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What is Sumud to me?

We don’t sell our land because it is like our mother. Our territory is our body. And we don’t sell our body. We don’t sell our mother. We wouldn’t sell it, because it is sacred.

Statement from the Second Ecosocialist Meeting, held in Belém, Brazil, November 2025, with participation of 99 organizations and more than 350 people, including a strong presence of organizations representing Indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants.

what is Sumud
to me –
an African American
at such a distance
in a western country?

here
i learned primly
that
home is where the heart is

but those
whose homes are
daily destroyed –
do their hearts fall
with them?

Sumud
replies
homes are folded up
with care
and carried
in hearts beating bravely

Sumud
replies
that when hearts are shot down
the rubble stones
of their former homes
are lovingly recycled
to build perennial rooms
that are sacred tombs

Sumud
replies
that housed in these rooms
of unmoving sand
the ancestors
become
a legion of vigils
fighting alongside the living

Sumud
replies
that these invisible vigils
lead the living by the hand

Sumud
replies
that in each death
to reclaim the land
where a new home will stand
there is
an ecology of love
and life
and resilience
and victory

(c) Julia wright. December 7, 2025. All Rights Reserved to Susan Abulhawa’s playgroundsforpalestine.org, to the steering committee of the Global Sumud Flotilla and to what remains of the family of Refaat Alareer, the poet and educator assassinated by the IOF on December 6th 2023.

 

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Zionist madness turns inwards

profiling
is
a police discipline
made-in-USA
officialized
to catch
the first serial killers
that are as american
as the wars
our country wages

textbook cases
such as Ted Bundy’s
distinguish
an organized stage
of their serial criminality
whereby they are successful
in not getting caught –
from a disorganized stage
where self control is lost
and the compulsion
of the killing spree takes over
to the point of self defeat

in Israel today
mass murder
has reached
the highest stage of disorganization:
Alex Karp of Palantir
jumps up and down
on his conference chair
high on malignant narcissism
or something else
and
soldiers in the IOF
commit suicide
because they cannot contain
the shame
of following the Hannibal order
that directed them
to shoot down their own
on October seventh –
while other manic Israeli soldiers
dress up and mock Palestinians
in flaunted smartphone footage
they know will incriminate them

meanwhile a grinning Ben Gvir
does a photo op
while he distributes candy
to those in the Knesset
who voted for the death penalty
against the victims of their own genocide

there is a moment when madness
turns inwards
and runs amok

(c) Julia Wright December 8, 2025. All Rights Reserved to Susan Abulhawa’s playgroundsforpalestine.org, to the steering committee of the Global Sumud Flotilla and to what remains of the family of Refaat Alareer, the poet and educator assassinated on December 6th 2023 by the IOF

 

 

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After the March for Mumia – a bluesy poem

i so longed to march
with y’all
from the city of
the absence of love
to SCI Mahanoy
that here across the pond
i lost balance
and fell
twice in twelve days
as i walked
in a foreign town
with a Free Mumia banner
in my mind

yesterday
while y’all gathered
in front of Mumia’s prison
i was seeing a doctor
for this repeated loss of balance

after examining me
the doctor shook her head
and said :
Madam
if you want to walk
safe distances
you need a cane

this morning
i bought a cane
but
the real
weathered walking stick
is
in your youthful hands

(c) Julia Wright. December 10, 2025. All Rights Reserved to the medical expenses of Mumia Abu-Jamal