As I watch the TV
and witness the horror
the day slips away
as if it never began
the powerless feeling
the air heavy
light becomes dark
day turns to ashes
the gray in my brain
matter becomes black
no joy in birds
chirping
the people lack
hurt driven deep
into a pit of
no turning back
I ask for nothing
hope for something
the chatter
the denial
smiles of dolls
appearing to sleep
I clamor for news
to break the hell—
to no avail
people boiling fear
shit soaked rumors
inferiority beliefs
holding patterns
that sever love
and disintegrate into hate
posing as knowledge
arrogance on steroids
don’t ask my opinions—
‘til truth matters
again.
I ask myself to batch it all up
and let go
float the raft down the river
and watch it wash up later
downwind
stop pretending this doesn’t exist
and face the truth
when will I see that it was part of my
skin
all the wounds
all the lines
all the ugly spots—
I chose to ignore
I try, I do—
but, however I parse it out
I lose in the end
the meaning—
of why
I tried again,
at all.
We bleed fatigue now
as contagion and war spreads itself
like jam across the universe
jamming mutations / mutating jam
from reason to reason to gone fishin’
perhaps no reason existed, just mutation.
Fatigue recites a Soliloquy
to the few who engage
a wide-eyed gaze
at the mutant vibration
of mutations—
living amongst our dead.
We plod on with our day
fatigue welded to the end
of our words—
muscles atrophied / nerves deadened.
Fatigue engulfs like petrol on water
flames / bombs / fire's
in our mind’s eye
skies lit / trauma’s blaze
a trail through Millennial moments—
but those mutants are mutating
again / the bitter bitten
bastard enemies
of our future dreams—
Act One complete!
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.
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.
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.
Hainteny is the traditional poetry of Madagascar. Hainteny means ‘knowledge of words’ in Malagasy language. It is part of traditional oral literature of Madagascar, which is mostly in the form of a dialogue between a female and a male, and strongly reminds me of poems of Tamil Sangam literature and Gatha Saptasati of India. Leonard […]
I have standards—
don't bleed on me
paltry mist-eyed
blather
I have standards
so don't bother
me with your
ghastly sought
after chatter—
flung
too quick at the page
a flick/ a flack
a-tickety-tack
I have standards
to adhere to today—
to cement wisdom
into my brain
don't waste
words on words
every damn day
to dress your space
bargained for pay—
I have standards
that don't lean
that way.
