Euphemism

Some things cannot go twice
and others just cannot go
as I tip toe through the shadows
past your closed circuits
and into the backyard that is lit
like an ember to the sky
where these eyes are gemstones,
to write captions.
It's not about making waves
yet the birds are taut,
treacherous and on the line -
no one put them there.
The satellites cannot preach
to the stars as they drift
into the sea,
in silico, as they say.









Al-Moqawama
(The Resistance)

We have to embrace the idea that we are the leaders we are looking for. - Grace Lee Boggs

By Allah, if I see that on one side is the truth and on the other side all the rest of the people I, without caring and paying heed to those reproaching me, will fight all alone with my sword, on the way and path of the right, against them. - Emir Ali ibn Abi Taleb, pbuh.

War is not the time
for poetry -
that is for the evenings
of old men in other lands
who ring the bells
to commute their sentence,
those who barter time
with the ancients in senate.

Dare I say that?

But I am a fighter
at heart and know
a warning has to find
the warned, has to abandon
the bles-sed for a while.
A warner has to call
the laggers to the front
one by one in order
to cut them down
or lift them up.

We prayed on those nights
for ourselves. We prayed
for the ones who crawled
through the fields
on their bellies.
We watched the skies
and hoped the bombs
might be jubilations.

They weren't.

The tarmac and the dairy,
every single bridge gone.
The long drive through
abandoned streets
and the stockpile
of rice in the big
drama of flight.
The bitterness of translation
is the joy of understanding,
and vice versa.
There will be more of this.