WHAT IF...

...2009...
Imagine life under these conditions: Living in limbo under a foreign occupier. Having no self-determination, no right of return, and no power over your daily life. Being in constant fear, economically strangled, and collectively punished.

Having your free movement denied by enclosed population centers, closed borders, regular curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints, electric fences, and separation walls. Having your homes regularly demolished and land systematically stolen to build settlements for encroachers in violation of international law prohibiting an occupier from settling its population on conquered land.

Having your right to essential services denied - to emergency health care, education, employment, and enough food and clean water.

Being forced into extreme poverty, having your crops destroyed, and being victimized by punitive taxes. Having no right for redress in the occupier's courts under laws only protecting the occupier. Being regularly targeted by incursions and attacks on the ground and from the air.

Being willfully harassed, ethnically cleansed, arrested, incarcerated, tortured, and slaughtered on any pretext, including for your right of self-defense. Having no rights on your own land in your own country for over six decades and counting. Vilified for being Muslims and called terrorists, Jihadists, crazed Arabs, and fundamentalist extremists. Victimized by a slow-motion genocide to destroy you.

According to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, Israel has conducted state-sponsored genocide against the Palestinians for decades and intensively in Gaza. In a September 2006 Electronic Intifada article titled "Genocide in Gaza" he wrote: "A genocide is taking place in Gaza....An average of eight Palestinians die daily in the Israeli attacks on the Strip. Most of them are children. Hundreds are maimed, wounded and paralyzed. (It's become) a daily business, now reported (only) in the internal pages of the local press, quite often in microscopic fonts. The chief culprits are the Israeli pilots who have a field day," like shooting fish in a barrel. Why not, they're only Muslims, so who'll notice or care.

What if war were just a chaotic dress rehearsal in a school play
and torture were long philosophical conversations with idiots,
bullets, tiny bits of lint culled from laughing soldier's uniforms,
fighter jets, kites dropping from the shoulders of the sun,
warships, marshmallows floating in a sea of hot chocolate,
and tanks, funny little cars full of tumbling clowns?

O! If only it were so then all of the world's hideous warmongers might be
paper dolls in rooms full of beautiful children, each with a pair of scissors...

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

sdrawkcaB nruT (Turn Backwards)

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)My toothpaste, toothbrush, shavers and shaving foam. The clothes I'm wearing, the cough medicine I'm using to get rid of a persistent cough, the cigarettes I bought for Ahmed, and some tobacco for my arghile. My cell phone, the laptop onto which I compulsively type my eye-witness accounts from the hell surrounding me. All that's needed for a modest, yet dignified existence in Gaza comes from Egypt, and arrives on the shops' shelves through the tunnels. These are the very same tunnels that the Israeli F16s hasn't stopped heavily bombing in the last 12 hours, destroying along with them thousands of Rafah houses near the border.


A few months ago I had three teeth dodgy fixed, and at the end of the operation I asked my Palestinian dentist where he'd gotten all of his dental equipment from – the anesthetic, the syringes, ceramic inlays and all the other tools. With a sly look on his face, he'd made a certain gesture with his hands: from under ground. There's no doubt that through the tunnels underneath Rafah, explosives and weapons were also smuggled, the very same that the resistance is using today to try and contain the terrifying advance of the armour-plated Israeli death-machines. But it's next to nothing compared with the tons of consumer goods flowing into famished Gaza under this criminal siege.
It's easy enough on the internet to find photos documenting how even livestock comes in from Egypt through the tunnels. Sedated, strapped-up goats and cows are lowered into an Egyptian well, re-emerging on this side to provide milk, cheese and meat. Even the main hospitals in the Strip stocked up surreptitiously at the border. The tunnels were the only resource allowing the Palestinians to survive the siege, a siege which long before the current bombings, was the cause of a 60% unemployment rate and forced 80% of families to live off humanitarian handouts... (Read more at Gab's blog)

I have been witness to the four pillars and see no reason
to carry death there.
Doesn’t the world know that life moves for more than just
the sons of Abraham?

O! I see the stunned throats floating by in the dusk to
their stiff-limbed sleep
as metal rains down over the Jordan’s western prophet,
children dying there.

I am here, waiting, breathing in the dusk under the shadow
of the patriarch,
asking, can we again build the shrine inside the soul and
leave our flesh to time?

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

Please visit Gabs at her wonderful blog...

A Fragment of the Emperors New Rags

Jewish Texts ("Turn backwards and you will see him.")

WHAT IF, CHILD?

What if war were just a chaotic dress rehearsal in a school play
and torture were long philosophical conversations with idiots,
bullets, tiny bits of lint culled from laughing soldier's uniforms,
fighter jets, kites dropping from the shoulders of the sun,
warships, marshmallows floating in a sea of hot chocolate,
and tanks, funny little cars full of tumbling clowns?

O! If only it were so then all of the world's hideous warmongers might be
paper dolls in rooms full of beautiful children, each with a pair of scissors...

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

Demand a Ceasefire in Gaza Now!

WAITING FOR IT

Arundhati Roy on the Palestinian / Israeli Conflict

(Ben Heine - Cartoons)WAITING FOR IT
a poem by thepoetryman

Why do they stay there, between war and peace?
Sky’s tapestry doles out guns, bombs and rocks
While flesh and bone swim away from the ache
Yet live on as the food for the murder of peace.

Why do we hide from the truth as if it were an ogre
While death makes a home inside their living
And war dispatches a raven to their door,
Smirking with the teeth of empire?

Why do we wait, stooped for another wink?
The sky’s drapery has tossed down ample clues;
Peace is breathing in harmony with war.
(Roadmaps are useless to blind leaders.)

Why do they hold there, hunched in the gloom?
Hatred’s bird cackling with bereavement
Needs end. Are we not rightly dishonored
When we fill its trough with blood?

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

Sabbah's Blog

BULLDOZING PEACE

Thanks to Alternate Focus for the video.

PEACE IN THIS EMERALD DREAM

READ THE POEM +/-

I Have a Dream - Address at March on Washington- August 28, 1963. Washington, D.C.
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. [Applause]
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.






I declare peace in this; thy emerald dream.
I declare peace in this; thy emerald dream.
I declare peace in this; thy emerald dream.
I declare peace in this; thy emerald dream.

Men, women, children, all and every color
Rise up to meet me in this nomadic vapor.
Rise up! Greet me with thy soul’s civility,
I can ask no more and no less of thee.

Affirm the worlds waiting stillness with me.
Bring thy grace, let go thy mortal weaponry.
Rise up in the streets of the towns and cities,
Rise up! Tilt thy angry faces toward the sun!

Emerald dream, I march with thee this day.
I stride with thee… sharing thy morning walk,
I sit with thee… and drink at thy table,
I speak with thee… though I see thee not.

O! Ghost in the shade of want come forth,
Walk with me, walk with me in my trance!
I declare peace in this; thy emerald dream,
Open eyed to it grasping thy bleeding chance!

O! We tongueless ones in our painful disgrace
Let us not use deceit to twist the patient hands failing,
Instead let us smile upon the poor lives of all men
and carry this emerald sheen with a proud face!






Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman


Dissendent Voice

MLK - I Have a Dream

RESCINDING PROMISE

READ THE POEM +/-

If you read the... ...quotations from the Bible, which include all the verses that deal with the "Promise Land," you will realize that God has promised the Holy Land to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel). The promise was literally given to their descendants, not to the followers of any specific religion. These descendants, today, are the Muslims, Christians, or Jews who have been associated with the Holly Land for thousands of years. Most Eastern European and Russian Jews, for example, are descendants of people who converted to Judaism starting from the eighth century. Therefore, the promise does not apply to them because they are not descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. However, the promise applies to descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who followed Jesus Christ and became the Christians of the Holly Land. The promise also applies to those Christians who, later, followed the message of Islam and became Muslims of the Holly Land. Thus, God's promise is for Jews, Christians, and Muslims of the Holly Land, not for other followers of these three great religions.

O! The Promised Land should never have been,
Never been pledged in the rescinding script of man.
These honorable descendants;
Isaac, Jacob and Abraham,
Do you know them?

All we can imagine is the depth of they're pain,
The pain of having been held in promissary note
That so many have died for
While pledged to a land
That should never have been.


Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

Watching Lebanon

Two Fox News Journalists Kidnapped in Gaza

PROFIT MIRROR

READ THE POEM +/-

Militarization of the Eastern Mediterranean
The bombing of Lebanon is part of a carefully planned and coordinated military road map. The extension of the war into Syria and Iran has already been contemplated by US and Israeli military planners. This broader military agenda is intimately related to strategic oil and oil pipelines. It is supported by the Western oil giants which control the pipeline corridors. In the context of the war on Lebanon, it seeks Israeli territorial control over the East Mediterranean coastline.
In this context, the BTC pipeline dominated by British Petroleum, has dramatically changed the geopolitics of the Eastern Mediterranean, which is now linked , through an energy corridor, to the Caspian sea basin:
"[The BTC pipeline] considerably changes the status of the region's countries and cements a new pro-West alliance. Having taken the pipeline to the Mediterranean, Washington has practically set up a new bloc with Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Israel, " (Komerzant, Moscow, 14 July 2006)
Israel is now part of the Anglo-American military axis, which serves the interests of the Western oil giants in the Middle East and Central Asia.


Mighty man is a lie
Wrapped in mighty wars
With mighty blasting guns
Unafraid to have die
His god-jawed deed
Smothered in oily terror.

O! Petulant living!

Even my blind grasp
Of these words
Is no more than
A churning obituary
Held up
To fading mirror...

Man screams peace
While horrified from war,
Then dreams up wars
To profit oil’s raven.

Have we no more than ugliness
To bend our bodies back upon us;
Our war complete, our hunger fed,
Thirst’s tin cup filled with stones?

The man that says,
“War is the road to peace”
Is a fool and a coward.
Warring man is a liar
Wrapped in God’s breath,
Brandishing the mighty book
With oily, bloodstained hands.

Let us witness serenity approach,
Put our fingers inside her desperation
Falling from God’s deafening lips.
Grasping peace we can outlive war
And its dark pestilent dirge.
In peace we might cling tightly of love
Bending nearer of one another.


Copyright 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

Guerrilla News

MIRRORS AND SMOKE

BBC News: Moscow urges Hamas to transform
--The talks mark a break in ranks between Russia and other members of the so-called Middle East peace Quartet.
Israel has expressed anger at Russia's invitation to Hamas, with one minister calling it a "stab in the back".--



Today the blanket was cleaved from off the bed
As America leaned toward self destruction
Hunkered down in perplexity
Caused her to backslide
And trip tongue
In her early hour

Hamas, some said, need voice to pop and spatter
As America slouched over its liberty trough
Parched for breath- and sanity
She measured her creed
Giving a wink overseas
In her early hour

Today the blanket was ripped away from her
As America shivered now bare- and barren
Her promises (or mirrored fears)
Caused her to slip back
Ponder the reflection
In her early hour

Moscow gripped the corner and hauled it off
And America cowered away from the light
Bent in painful despondency
While worlds erupted
And slipped the knot
In her early hour

BBC