Gas, Gas, Gas – a poem for Gaza
Money, money, money ..”
-The Threepenny Opera
Bertolt Brecht
in between
their golden sheets
and their fossil fuel-heated
real fur blankets
the inbred genocide-mongers dream …
they dream of Gaza…
and in the blur of their drunken dream
the word is slurred –
Gasa, Gaas..a
becomes
gas, gas, gas…
little do they care
Gaza’s etymology
refers us to the gentleness
of healing gauze –
gas, gas, gas
is all they want
meanwhile
in brotherly Sudan
even from space
blood is seen
on satellite photos
staining the land –
the blood, blood, blood
wrung out of the People’s gold
is all they want
but Mother Earth
maps for us
the ashes of criminal pyres
the forgotten mass graves
the lush forests
now growing through ghost markets
and our Mother
remembers for us
rootical names
and
destroyed land deeds
and
ancestral ecology’s seeds
and
sacred national sovereignty
springing as eternal
as the return of Spring
(c) Julia Wright December 21, 2025. All Rights Reserved to Susan Abulhawa’s playgroundsforpalestine.org, to the steering committee of the GSF and to what remains of the family of Refaat Alareer, poet and educator assassinated by the IOF two years ago.
Between Gaza and us
To Ahmad Ibsais whose essay “The glass between me and the living” made me think of my father’s “Between the world and me” about his stumbling on the remains of a lynched man – and moved me deeply:
…I have been living behind glass since October 2023.
Not metaphorically. There is actual glass between me and the world. I can see everything: the cafés filling with laughter, the cars packed with the living, my own reflection doing ordinary things. But I cannot reach through. I cannot make my voice carry. I am frozen in the moment I first understood that witnessing atrocity means nothing…
we have a secret sacred
knowledge
of how to
pierce
a white hot hole
in the iron of their dome
with the Sumud
they have no algorithm for
we have mastered the secret
of remaining armed
even stripped
of visible weapons
because
Love
and
the Ancestors
and
the oneness with the Land
remain
our invincible arsenal
and
you,
Ahmad,
armed with the glass bending tool
of your pen,
are melting the transparent wall
between the world and you
with the words you have blown
to let us know
beyond the cold caging numbness
of sand and limestone
the red hot flame
of your pain
(c) Julia Wright. December 24, 2025. All Rights.
Now that the Twilight of Evil is fading to black
For Malcolm X, Refaat Alareer, John Coltrane and Ben Barka – this Christmas day – in the spirit of the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana
And for Caroline “Caro” Saldana, so beloved, so missed and yet so present among us
now that the twilight of evil
is fading to black
and
darkness is upon us
as we enter
the long night
of the predator
a smile on his face
bombs behind his back
what do we take
with us
in the backpack
of the soul?
now that the twilight of evil
is fading to black
and foreign imperial wars
are coming home to roost
in a last desperate boost –
the book
i take with me
into the trenches
is all about Sumud
now that the twilight of evil
is fading to black
the flashlight
to help me steer
my steps
through their imposed fear
is
“If I Must Die”
by Refaat Alareer
now that the twilight of evil
is fading to black
and i must choose
a song to sing
to march to
to carry me through
till daybreak
i will take
“Love Supreme”
(c) Julia Wright, December 25, 2025. All Rights Reserved.
Word stone by Word stone, building a new language – a Gaza poem
the zionists
do not only target
our Poets,
they fell
a language
the Griots have used
for so long
to make us understand
we carry in our words
the song of our forbidden waves
the perennity of ancient forests
and
our stolen land
our legacy
is a verbal amputee
that we still try to
make dance
our legacy
is a language
blown up –
jagged pieces
around us,
a rubble
of broken words
our legacy
is
to take baby steps
and
building block
by
building block,
word stone
by
word stone –
turn our language
into
a new unassailable home
(c) Julia Wright December 26, 2025. All Rights Reserved to Susan Abulhawa’s playgroundsforpalestine.org, the steering committee of the GSF and to what remains of the family of Refaat Alareer targeted and murdered by the IOF.
Four Kwanzaa haiku dedicated to Bisan Owda, Susan Abulhawa and Ahmad Ibsais
first day of Kwanzaa –
starved children unwrap rubble
but not to find toys
here garlands strung tight
there families bomb scattered
in between – fog clears
it looks like beach sand
it is dust – layers of dust
from ceaseless fire
in stricken Haifa
Santa Claus is arrested
to cleanse away hope
(c ) Julia Wright December 26 2025 All Rights Reserved to Bisan, Susan and Ahmad.
