And the rising
Begins—
And the reign
Of innocence
Became denial
In their heads
And death
Became the lead
And truth
Met its match
And the rising
Fed their
Nimble brains
And the reign
Of innocence
Died that day
And it became
The beginning
The end
Again.
My poem RED is on the Feature page of Spillwords Press today.
Spillwords is a great online literary platform publishing writers and poets from all over the globe.
I’m very happy to have their continued support of my work, go give it a read and leave me your comments when you do!
RED
written by: Jay Mora-Shihadeh
@painterspalate
In full appreciation of red I fire the breath that burns the heat of love I rest the hand that caresses the wealth of harmony to pools of longing that run deep along wells of lava lust and molten earth, core fire-lit and…read more
This ArtDesign “Hearts Content” is created from one of my original oil paintings, originally painted in a yellow and orange palette. Here, I’ve re-created using a purple palette, designed in a unique, one-of-a-kind collage.
instant noodles
in that cheap plastic
that rattles my ears
crackling
like pork rinds
the sodium packet
off the charts
links of beef
franks that plump
when you cook them
or maybe it was
pork?
campbell's beans
with blobs of
fatty meat
newport cigarettes
that sated
my need,
for the taste
of mint
the heat
of burn
in my lung
fire felt alive
it did,
bled the hell
out of my pain
when i was only
a kid.
i cried at the light
next to humphrey’s
pest control
the news
stopped the laughter
in the back
of the BRAT
as we sat
shocked
still, silent
frozen
for a moment
before/ after
the red
turned green
then we
proceed
crying teens
loaded
in the back/ the bed
of our friends BRAT—
John Lennon shot!
gunned down
by a madman
a fan with a plan
and a .38 special
FIVE
hollow-point bullets
sprayed
FOUR
hit john’s back
and we sat
crying
in the back
of our friends
BRAT.
“Universal Perspective” is a digital ArtDesign I created using the Figma platform, from my original oil pastel on watercolor paper titled “Universal Day and Night” .
“Universal Perspective” is a digital ArtDesign I created using the Figma platform, from my original oil pastel on watercolor paper titled “Universal Day and Night” .
I wanted to share excerpts from this document I came across, as I’ve been researching historical literature and poetry from my Palestinian heritage. Not exactly easy for me to find, as a lot has been destroyed, or lost over the years to the occupation.
Here is an excerpt, and also a piece from poet, Fadwa Tuqan:
PALESTINIAN LITERATURE Translated from: Resistance literature In Occupied Palestine By Ghassan Kanafani
The fall of Palestine to the Zionists in 1948 led to a disastrous change both in the number and the social structure of the Arab population in occupied Palestine. Nearly three quarters of the 200,000 Arabs who continued to live in their homeland were peasants. The cities were mostly evacuated either during the war or soon afterwards. This led to a shocking deterioration in Arab social conditions due to the fact that the cities had been the centers of both political and cultural effusion. As the Zionist occupants closed their military ring, they started to impose their oppressive measures; the atmosphere was convenient for them. Their chief purpose was to eradicate every trace of the Arab personality and to implant the seeds of new trends which might grow and integrate within the Zionist political and literary life.
Palestinian Literature, up to this tragic fall had been part of the mainstream of the Arab literary movement which flourished during the first half of the century. It had got its sources from and had been influenced by Egyptian, Syrian and Lebanese writers who led the literary movement then. Even renowned Palestinian writers had been indebted for their fame mostly to the Arab capitals which used to receive them and patronize their productions. Several factors had in fact contributed to diminishing the value of Palestinian literature at a time when Palestine was enjoying a prominent position in the political arena and the struggle for Arab nationalism. After 1948, Palestinian literature succeeded in laying the foundations of a new literary movement which may be better described as the literature of Exile rather than Palestinian or Refugee literature.
POETRY OF RESISTANCE IN OCCUPIED PALESTINE
TRANSLATED BY SULAFA HIJJAWI
Published by the Ministry of Culture
Baghdad- Iraq 1968
(This is a revised and edited version- 2009)
EVER ALIVE
Fadwa Tuqan
My beloved home land
No matter how long the millstone
Of pain and agony churns you
In the wilderness of tyranny,
They will never be able
To pluck your eyes
Or kill your hopes and dreams
Or crucify your will to rise
Or steel the smiles of our children
Or destroy and burn,
Because out from our deep sorrows,
Out from the freshness of our spilled blood
Out from the quiverings of life and death
Life will be reborn in you again………
Loss fungal/ passed away
Time gave me a gift and I held tight
Helix band tightened/ screwed
Deep pools of wondrous/ blue
Moments lost in parallax/ broken concrete
Eyes set/ fixed on you/ spinning
Over the moon/ under my bed
Sealed on the edges
The smack talk/ backwards
I remember the happy times
Lost then gained/ over then under/ then over
then under/ then lost again.
Saturation comes in quiet realizations
blanketing the soul you left behind/ in haste
on annunciations of your lack of caring/ of giving a shit
about the effect it had on you—
to jolt you like a wicked bolt of lightning/ into a reckless oblivion
a mainlining of pure rage/ into your veins/ then lost
to that perpetual joke of a chase/ of the good life.
Hell—the saturation blessed you/ it pummeled into you
an existence of God/ God in your way/ slow/ steady/ feeling the pain
not by happenstance/ by southwest by 66/ but by love—
it saturated you like a slow-moving train
an experience of electric/ shooting into me/ a wave/ of enlightenment
saturating my brain/ unlike all those moments—
I neglected to care for/ back in the day.
my hair is longer
my beard has grown something
i can’t identify—
i consume the maddening
fodder like candy—
i play with the idea
of shaving my beard off/ lobbing my hair off
i find pleasure
in the act of starting over.
have i turned into a sitting duck?
i thought the duck was fake
fake ‘til i became the fake
lamed
protruding into the postnasal drip
of my inebriated brain
actual confusion of time
leech/ ing/ a/ drip/ of/ sor/ row
from our last days
cups with meager pasts
drops of mocha rings
the stink of weeks / days/ months
the smoking of 2021/ 22
a foray into a mutated
co-existence of strains that bleak
the ‘scape ‘cross our atmosphere/ dark days
sheltering the response of nothing
from nobody nowhere
lost in the haze of what we thought
was over
how we complain and wonder
about our future/ holding patterns
where they lead/ wonder
about the virus/ the political scene
sitting ducks waiting for a break in the
stalemate/ checkmate
gridlock/ post-debate(s)
as we add
Ad Nauseum
to the debate list slate.
on the crest of 2022/ zip like that it went
crap crap/ into the loo
we clear our eyes from 2021/ was it true?did we skip a year/ I thought we closed-out
the dreary/ the weary/ the bloody fear
skip jump mutate
to next
act/ year/ bring it on man! can’t get any
better/worse have no fear
Hope it's a great start to our New Year!
Happy 2022 whew!
Years end on new/ as the holiday descends
into an assault on the many/ and a prophecy
for the smiling claims that lace the airwaves
the hardened criminal becomes your friend
and/ I once saw a reflection of light/ leading into
a millennium promised anew
a fresh-take for the starved
fragile— already broken
to fend off the inevitable descent
into hell/ we strove for change
as it was past due
a pay-up to exchange the
forced poverty and blood-sucking
rich on poor/ on not poor/ but
now poor—
it never ends.
