OUR EYES REFUSE TO DIE
to Mumia, Leonard, Imran Khan, Keziah Nuissier and the thousands whose eyes have been tortuously targeted by those who need us to be blind…
profilers say
serial killers
target the eyes
of their victims
because they fear
the pupil carries the last imprint
of the perpetrator
the fear of the eye
is ancient
in the predatory mind
those who torture would obliterate
our eyes
because they know
they are the window
to a beyond
they fear –
our soul
they would obliterate
our eyes
because even though we are watched
and surveilled
they realize we watch back
and do not look down
they would obliterate
our eyes
because our eyes bear witness
to their intent
they would obliterate
the vision
of our visionaries
they would blind
the seers
to destroy the depth
of their insight
Emmett Till’s eye
was gouged out
as miles away
in struggling Algeria
the French paratroopers
Frantz Fanon wrote about
invented a technique
that severed the optic nerve
a practice handed down
today
to the gendarmes in Martinique
today
from Mumia and Leonard Peltier
to Imran Khan
it is their vision
able to x-ray
lies and false narratives
that is the object
of cruel and inhumane attention
but in the end,
as Victor Hugo wrote about the slain Abel:
the eye
was in the tomb
and it was
staring at Cain…
(c) Julia Wright. April 6, 2026. All Rights Reserved to Mumia’s March of Innocence.
IF I COULD JUST STAY VERY STILL
Where is our collective heart? Alice Walker
if i could just stay very still
if i could shun all my ceaseless agitation
if i could breathe as gently
in and out
as a child flying a kite gingerly
in just enough breeze
if i could choose a sacred moment
of the night
when all aggressive tires
stop swishing
if i could find that elusive groove
when the bomb race
is sleeping
if i could just stop
be patient
and listen
i would hear
seas and seas away
in an ancestral awakening
in the only real land
that cannot be stolen
beyond algorithmic borders
beyond ports demanding
our passes
i would hear
our collective heart
beating
(c) Julia Wright. April 6, 2026. All Rights Reserved.
I DON’T WANT TO GO THERE
how many times
do we say
i am not going there?
we never explain
where that distant place is
or what arriving there
would imply
because the point is
to not see it
even
in the corner of our eye
how many times
do we say
i won’t go there?
and that beyond
we shun
becomes a well of darkness
we refuse to explore
perhaps because we cling to
the devil we know
rather than venture into
the blind spot
the stories we were told
gave us no preparation for
we all have a
there
in us
where we don’t want to go
that we don’t want to know
an exploded space
a scary time
as dark as childhood’s night
where words of fear
don’t rhyme
just as small children
are still haunted
by the
wild things
their parents locked away –
we flee from
a shadowy land
where each tax-paid robot
threatens our soul
we would rather be blind
at noon
than look inwards
to see
the finality of
our accountability
but now
childish times are over
and
if only we would go there
in our mind
we have
the clear responsibility
to help
liberate Palestine
(c) Julia Wright. April 11, 2026. All Rights Reserved to what remains of the family of Refaat Alareer, to Susan Abulhawa’s playgroundsforpalestine.org and to the steering committee of the `Global Sumud Flotilla.
THE BLOCKBUSTER OF THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ IS COMING TO A WAR THEATER NEAR YOU
“oil and water do not mix”
Old adage
“Where did the word “block” come from?
From Middle English blok (“log, stump, solid piece”), from Old French bloc (“log, block”), from Middle Dutch blok (“treetrunk”), from Old Dutch *blok (“log”), from Proto-West Germanic *blokk, from Proto-Germanic *blukką (“beam, log”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰelǵ- (“thick plank, beam, pile, prop”).”
– Wiktionary, the free dictionary
to block or to unblock
is the trumpwellian question
whether it is better
to block the strait of Hormuz
the better to unblock it –
the Orange man sleeps
in his golden bunker
perchance to dream delusionally
about an impossible solution
on the blocking-board
which checker move to play –
is the obsessive subject of the day
whether it is blocking Cuba
or blocking Gaza with Bibi
if only it could be
the manic glee
of a total blocking spree..
it is all about the absolute control
serial killers
from Jeremy Dahmer to Ted Bundy
crave over their slaves
meanwhile the corporate media
whose strings the blockade-builders pull
saturate the air
with the word –
block here
block there
block on every front
oil is to be taken
the blockbuster of the strait of Hormuz
is coming to a war theatre
near you –
an Epstein class production
with
free popcorn
and sampling bottles of settler wine
labeled to the vintage names
of their criminal soldiers slain
meanwhile
in occupied Haifa
the authorities
of Damon Prison
blockblockblock
hundreds of solidarity cards
sent to our sisters
to break
their enforced silence
behind bars
but
the blockade-builders’ ignorance
is their downfall
since they do not know
that rootically
a block
really signifies
a tree trunk
a wooden log that floats
and
that hundreds of boats –
whole Flotillas
have just left
and more are leaving
from the ports of a vast Sumud world
to break
the blockade
separating us
from Palestine’s liberation
(c) Julia Wright. April 13, 2026. All Rights Reserved to the Global Sumud Flotilla.
