WAKING UP TO MY BIRTHDAY
” Mohammad Wishah was on his way to tell a story
but he became part of the story”
Hani Mahmoud, journalist in Gaza reporting on the
murder of his colleague and friend on April 10th
to my daughter and to my son.
the first thought
half dreamed half awakened
i have on my birthday
today –
a thought
i will have
from now on
each new year
i am gifted with –
is that i am alive
when so many
across the planet
at the end of the night
do not open their eyes
i think of Mohammad Wishah
who died
target-bombed like
hundreds of other journalists
in Gaza
i listen to his daughter
as she remembers her father’s last words
encouraging her to be a journalist
and I go back in time
to when my dying father
told me I had it in me
i could do it
in time
i hear
that vibration
that invisible thread
of connection –
our common cloth
ever born
so ancient
yet untorn
from birthday to deathday
we weave our way
in and out
of the time we collected
before we give others
the gift
we accepted –
our ancestral life for liberation
we are here
they will be there:
no interruption
that cannot be
sewn back
by Love
(c) Julia Wright April 15, 2026. All Rights Reserved.
A SPECIAL KIND OF LAUGHTER
to Howard Nutt, one of my father’s favorite poets,
author of “Special Laughter”.
the drunkards
in the White House
tripping over waves
of vermouth
make us laugh
so much
we cry –
we can at last cry those tears
frozen
by the numbness
of the daily mass death
they engineer
at distance
thanks to AI go-betweens
who do not know
how to laugh
or for that matter
shed real tears
(c) Julia Wright April 18, 2026. All Rights Reserved
IN A BLIND SPOT FARAWAY FROM LOVE – a birthday poem for Mumia
to Mumia
up on high
a cat on a ledge
jumps far down
to the ground
and lands with grace
on its four paws –
the tightrope miracle
of line upon line
that happen to rhyme
another blackout
after a hurricane
no candle
a computer gone dead
just a pen and paper –
a combat poem
about light
blindly written
in the dark
another birthday today –
your forty fourth year
behind bars
another birthday today
and
the People’s storm
blowing around your prison walls
may just create a miracle –
the end of the blackout
in the minds
of your judges and jailers
even though they are illiterate enough
to ask AI to write their poetry
even though they have tried unsuccessfully
to kill your story
even though they hang on desperately
to the contraband of impunity
in their own self-manufactured prison:
a bunkered blind spot
where the light of Love
must not break
the vampires vs the People’s dawn
the People’s dawn vs the dusk of a corrupt system –
the winds are in the back
of your steadfast ship
sailing for freedom …
(c) Julia Wright. April 24, 2026. All Rights Reserved to the family of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
PALANTIR WOULD STEAL OUR STOLEN LAND?
Chickens come home to roost
– Malcolm X
On April 22nd, Palantir announced a $300 million deal with the US Department of Agriculture which will use the software company’s technology to manage farmland as geopolitical risks threaten global supply chains.
– Status Coup News
ignorant of the punishment
the Gods dealt Icarus,
there are those in the Pentagon
who have been trying to dim the sun
wherever on the planet
it profits them
and now Palantir
has obtained
from King Midas
a royal bonus:
the oversight of all our farmland
under the pretense
that our food supplies –
not theirs –
are threatened
by the very wars
the billionaires batten on
brazenly Palantir
claims that to legalize war crimes
would be good for profit
and
without compunction steals sovereignty
over land
that has been stolen
over and over again
from the native daughters
and native sons
who are Indigenous to it
but Mother Earth
like the non-dimmable sun
will not be vanquished
by AI seasons
invented by algorithms
or fields harvested
at the whim of a click
at the speed of manic thought
and all Palantir
will reign over
is the wasteland
of its own mad dream
sinking sinking
into quicksand
in the wake of
an anti-imperialist Hurricane
named
Malcolm
(c) Julia Wright. April 26, 2026. All Rights Reserved.
