The Black Out

"Yes, you are all equal, men and women, rich and poor, the healthy and the sick, taught Christ. However, it was not until the 18th century and the French Revolution that the Rights of Man were formally proclaimed and Man’s liberty affirmed, liberty to think, to love and to act and so to make our civilisation. But it needed only the briefest space of time in the 20th century for the barbaric spirit of evil, of crime, of hatred, to make the tranquil village of Khiam in South Lebanon, nestling among the olive trees, the vines and the fig trees tended by its solid, hard-working peasants, into a prison camp worthy of the Nazis and evily reputed for the tortures and suffering inflicted on its inmates. There the occupying forces imprisoned and tormented their fellow humans come from the same stock of Abraham....." -Unknown Author

The secrets I take to bed
are no longer my own
excerpts, persona non grata
by law it is suggested
penalties of up to five
years in a federal penitentiary
and fines, there is comfort
in this prediction
the scar of blood still
within the mattress

and Rome said so too

we see it coming
the Moon still says yes
the leak keeps returning
through the open door
the barn tries to stay
as red as the wheelbarrow
which used to be a promise

the most naive color
preemptive in the consultations
of contracted work
we want you to do this
for that much
the pole at Khiam
remembers those tied to it
reaches for those who fled.

To the abandoned
it is a waste of time
this redness
over more red
to the abandoned
machetes and jeeps
find the marks,

whole nations die
in their sleep
and wake up breathing
they keep bleeding
the words we know why
and that is okay too.

I heard the story from them after the war had subsided, not ended but abated. By some miracle, the parents found Lena and Ali and Fatooma and Hanan and Shetha (which means fragrance) and Ali's brother and that Ali's wife and their children and someone's mother-in law and Lulu (which means Pearl) and some others in a gray Mercedes which was broken down on the side of the road and transferred everyone into their old Honda where their daughter Ahlam (which means Dream) sat quietly with Ahmed her husband and their children Ali and Dana plus Mohamed (the agnostic) and his pious wife Dalal who was pregnant at the time . Thirty in all, jammed into the seats and trunk of a car in the middle of no where which is where a blackout happens...the world loses definition and everything that you know is what you feel inside and what you hear. What you see and taste and smell become secondary to everything that is witnessed. When it is mortar rounds the black out is all the more appealing to the subconscious, there is no fuel and the aperture is closing. They were the last to leave the war zone and by some miracle, some never did.

Khiam prison was operated by the SLA at the behest of the Israeli government. The prison was liberated by Shia forces in May 2000 and subsequently, destroyed by Israel in the invasion of 2006, an indication of the guilty who are known to attempt to destroy the evidence of the torture carried out at the famous site in the name of Israeli Security.




What About Mars?

No more problems says the package
the cure came in, no more
warning labels and the price tag
no longer legible. It began
with flashy children and fast cars
then people started talking
about the leftover stuff
after the move out,
wondered what would happen
to the crystal ball and Japanese flag.
Where to put Mars now?
Whose house next?