WHAT THE BODY AND THE MIND YEARN

Uncross your legs,

let me pull down

those obscuring panties

blocking gaze

and eager flesh

from what the body

and the mind yearn

- encountering you,

flesh to flesh.

12.-19.11.2024

EUROPEAN UNION'S VALUES

When we normalize genocide

we have lost the moral high

ground and dug deep in to

the dark bowels of the earth,

and there, in darkness,

we lecture to the world

about our values.

19.11.2024

#Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

THE SOUND OF SWANS

Suddenly, as I sit on a bench

in the sauna, waiting for it

to warm up, the sound

of swans

loud and brief, as they

fly above, in the gray

abundance of the sky.

11.11.2024

#Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

AMSTERDAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

Apartheid Israel's regime killed at least 88 people

in occupied Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria

in one day, yet 'Western' media prefers reporting

about the arrest of those that beat up racist

Israeli football hooligans rampaging in Amsterdam,

now granted victimhood by the 'Western' press

and the politicians who support the slaughter.

11.-19.11.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

USE THEM WHILE THEY ARE STILL SHARP

Life forges, among

lesser products, blades

with sharp edges 

that cut through

the world's obstacles

and lies.

But with time, they

rust, like the rest.

11.11.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

DESIRE

You dream 

of sinking

into her flesh

and little else,

little else

except that.

12.11.2024

WALKING TO THE CEMETERY

Only the sound

of migrating swans

from a distant lake

coming loud, your

mind does the rest,

glides the swans

along the dark

autumn waters.

11.-19.11.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

MASSACRES ARE HIDDEN WHILE PUNISHMENT FOR OPPOSING THEM IS MADE MANIFEST

Yesterday Israel killed at least 72 people

in a single attack at Beit Lahia in northern

Gaza, third of the dead children, and it

didn't make headlines - unlike today

Germany withdrawing a prize from

an architect for opposing the genocide

and calling for a boycott. Massacres

are hidden, punishment for calling

to an end to them made manifest. 

18.-19.11.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

LIGHT AND MIND

An hour of light remains, gray,

and cold white the landscape

beyond the separating glass

and the mind hidden in flesh

thinking the buried land into

 being from light and memory,

casting its vision out beyond

the glass, creating what it

believes it sees.

19.11.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

SHE CAST HER SPELL

She cast her spell

over distance, alluring,

having him, willing,

think of little else

but knowing her

in flesh, having her,

quenching the fire

engulfing him,

consuming flames

feeding lust in

delicious torment.

12.-18.11.2024

WHILE I LIE ON MY BED

Night, and while I lie

on the mattress on my bed,

others lie on beds of rubble,

and with rubble over

their heads entombed

alive, death left to take

them by those who turn

away the helping

hands with bullets.

11.-18.11.2024

BIRDS SING IN NOVEMBER

In mid-November

birds chirping, singing

briefly, closing

your eyes, banishing

the gray gloom,

you can think

it's spring coming,

not winter waiting.

12.11.2024

HE ADMIRES HER COURAGE

He admires her courage

while trying to create

himself the gift what was

promised and is owed;

gripped by stage fright,

the performer reluctant

to do his duty to her

and stand in attendance

for her pleasure.

14.11.2024

'WESTERN' JOURNALISM CONDEMNS ITSELF

1

Not on the front page, only

in a live feed hidden on a subpage

does The Guardian tell its readers

that Israel killed a journalist

and his wife, and then

The Guardian doesn't bother

telling us the names

of the journalist and his wife.

'Western' journalists attitude

towards their Palestinian colleagues

condemns them.

2

Mohammed Khreis and his wife were killed

immediately as their tent was hit, their

daughter Mira, age nine, dying of her wounds

two days later. Her brother is in a hospital given

the little treatment still available in Gaza.

11.-18.11.2024

ON A NOVEMBER MORNING

November morning, dawning

gray, scarce hours between the dark

of the night beginning, sparse

branches leafless, motionless

these hours pointing beyond

the low cloud-filled dim sky,

towards the hidden, golden Sun

and the lost colours bled

from the landscape by the fall.

12.-18.11.2024

BURNING

He must be honest,

she has tied him to a stake

of desire and kindled a fire

of lust consuming him,

and all he can ask is

that she would add

more wood to

the roaring flame.

12.-18.11.2024

APPROACHING THE SHORE

Our lives

the whispering wind

and the rising wave

arriving at time's shore,

fading, breaking,

to leave no trace,

yet not gone,

not yet.

12.-18.11.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

EACH TIME I AWAKEN

The pale day was dying

into dusk as I awakened,

light like life fading,

and drinking warmth,

read the number of the new

dead growing cold,

whose eyes see nothing,

not the fading of the light,

not the black night,

the innocent dead

murdered by those

whose consciences

lie dead in their own

minds, feeling nothing,

endless night claiming,

and the number

was 96, and now 111,

of the innocent dead,

lives stolen as I slept

in my luxury of safety

when they died in fear.

18.11.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

KEEP SHOUTING

 Just because the United States cut

its own throat doesn't mean we 

shouldn't be shouting and acting

for its victims, who keep dying

while the giant's body twitches.

07.11.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL VISION, BUT NOW

Walt Whitman's United States is as dead

as was his president on the bier; a nation

has died standing, like a beheaded martyr

it seeks a place where to lie down forever.

06.11.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

FOR THIS BLOODY DAY

Drunk from Trump's victory, Israel slaughters

Palestinian people in northern Gaza with glee,

bombards Lebanon, declares the coming

destruction of Iran, all just this morning.

The Democrats in the United States

spend tens of billions of dollars, sacrificed

hundreds of thousands of lives, trampled

on international law, threw away the future

of their nation - for this bloody day.

06.11.2024

#Poem Poem #Poems Poems #Poetry Poetry

THOSE WHO HAVE BLINDED THEMSELVES MORALLY

Those who support Israel's regime support it solely

because it claims to be Jewish. They would have no

interest towards it otherwise. 

Because to them all is seen through ethnicity and religion,

they think that people also oppose Israel's actions only

because it claims to be Jewish. 

Not because actions are war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Having blinded themselves morally, supporters of Israel's regime

can't understand people who act from moral conviction.

They see only labels that justify all or deny the right to live

where opponents of Israel's regime see human beings

committing war crimes or being victims of them.

31.10.-03.11.2024

#Poem Poem #Poems Poems #Poetry Poetry

THOSE WHO DON'T OPPOSE THE ONGOING GENOCIDE BY ISRAEL IN OCCUPIED PALESTINE

People who dismiss the demand to oppose a genocide

as a "purity test", who claim that something greater

is at stake than the mere fate of millions, those

people have lost what makes us humane beings

instead of merely humans. We need to be humane,

or soon we will be nothing but beasts.

03.11.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

ISRAELI REGIME SAYS IT KILLED 254 PEOPLE BECAUSE OCCUPATION SOLDIERS SAW ONE PERSON ON THE ROOF OF AN APARTMENT BUILDING

254 people were killed in Israel's occupation forces'

bombing of the house of the Abu Nasr family in

Gaza's Beit Lahia a week ago. 117 bodies recovered,

137 people still lost under the rubble, and the 'West'

considers the massacre of no great importance.

Certainly not of importance enough to take

any action, only to give the most mildest rebuke

to Israel's regime, and to urge it to behave

a bit better in the future, if that's not too much

to ask, and if it's, then no worries, do it again.

03.11.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

AN INTERNAL BONFIRE

Sometimes all you need for warmth is not a fire burning

in the stove, but merely gazing at a photograph that hides

more than it shows, yet with its promise gifts to imagination

the power to reveal what is hidden, and sets ablaze a roaring,

consuming fire that keeps you warm long after relief.

03.11.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

A WINTRY LANDSCAPE, EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL

An abundance of white

fills the landscape, the white

of the falling snow unites

the white land

with the white clouds,

and that enclosing white

comes and enters, and

it's white inside you,

the vast white space

merging with you - and

through you, it reaches

outwards, long after

the snow has melted

and the Sun shines on

the dead grass, that cold

whiteness lives in words.

03.11.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

YET IT'S THE SAME, WHATEVER FORM AND COLOUR IT TAKES

The gravel road had a wide pool

of brown meltwater, the pure

fallen snow, like a human soul,

encountering the world below.

Yet, birds drank from it, and

frozen over, covered thinly

with freshly fallen snow,

it looks like purity itself.

03.11.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

MELTING THE SNOW UPON THE SOUL

That one image evokes

all the images before,

and what they evoked

in the mind and flesh,

and the mind and flesh

respond, that one image

warms them, melting

the snow upon the soul.

03.11.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

NOT QUENCHED

He would like her to know

that the photo she send

had the same effect

as those previous ones,

even when the words

are few, dampened

by these bitter days'

less fair offerings,

but not quenched.

31.10.-03.11.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

THE CHANGE THAT HAS COME UPON ME

It might be the autumn old as myself on the edge

of winter's gray touch, or it might be that crimson

not of dawn or dusk after, before dark, but of life.

from children sprayed on rubble of bombed homes

and dreams. Chilled becomes dumb to much but

the lives torn not withered but budding from

the arms that carried them and hang limp

themselves crushed between collapsed floors.

It could be autumn, light tired as myself, or

it could be mass death celebrated by those

who rotted from the inside but stand while

felling entire cities and nations.

20.10.-01.11.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

TO THE INNOCENT DEAD IN PALESTINE AND LEBANON

Death on such a massive scale doesn't just extinguish

lives, crush bodies between collapsed floors, bury

them under rubble that was a shared existence.

No, something more dies, is dead, is being dug

up lifeless with desperate bare hands, carried

limp to be placed atop other cadavers on

horse-drawn wagons. It's our humanity itself

there, among the other mangled corpses,

laying not in peace, but in agony beyond

heartbeats, agony carved with shrapnel

into humankind itself.

01.11.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

THE MAIN STREET OF THE VILLAGE

Cold and clear day, pale sunlight

and an empty street you could walk

from one end to another and back

without seeing a single person, not

even one long dead, lost in time,

but perhaps on the way back

you would walk past yourself

on your way to the end.

31.10.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

THE BOOMERANG WILL RETURN

When you 'normalize' genocidal violence against

one group of people abroad, you 'normalize'

it everywhere. Including back at home.

The boomerang you threw will return.

31.10.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

SO MANY

Looking for poems about Oak Park found some,

but foremost poet after poet that had passed

through those streets, gazed at leaves being

blown through them from a window before

turning off the light, and again in the morning,

glass separating their peering face from dawn

light, drops of rain, snowflakes that would feed

their thoughts that the day. Oak Park a set

of clothes their life wore, until like Charles

Simic's it took on some other garment,

watched leaves and rain and snowflakes

fall on different streets writing different

poems into their fluid minds.

29.10.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

I DON'T WANT TO HEAR WHY THE MURDERER IS KILLING, I WANT HIM STOPPED

When people upset about Israel's crimes wrote

about the suffering of occupied Palestinians as reply

to Auschwitz Museum's post showing faces

 of the murdered, asking the Museum to comment,

to take a stand, to condemn,  I often replied saying,

it was not the place to ask, or the Museum's

to condemn.  Pleading to people to keep

the Holocaust and Israel's crimes separate

And now, when Israel is committing a genocide

in Palestine and massacring Lebanon, when people

talking about the slaughter bring up the Holocaust

up, historical trauma, against which I didn't spoke

before, because I thought it did play a role, I will

reply, "Please, not now. This is not the time

or place to bring up the long dead to excuse

the murder of being killed now. Have even

a little decency, and be silent."

24.10.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

DON'T LET THE BOMBS KILL THE HUMAN IN YOU ALSO

I don't understand how can you become dumb

to images and screams of death and suffering,

of broken bodies dead and alive, no matter

how often you see them. 

There are people who claim that they become.

That supposedly at some point a child whose

intestines are pouring out of their belly

doesn't shock them anymore.

I think they just haven't seen enough, forced

to look long enough, to listen long enough

the cries of the mangled and the dying,

to recognize that death on a mass scale

is still individuals dying, each individual

suffering as much as their loved kin

on their deathbed, and often more.

If you won't lose your ability to feel

for the latter, how could you lose it

when faced by the former? Look long

at the faces of the murdered, look long

at the faces of the wounded -

look and see the faces of your loved

ones. your kin, feel their pain. Allow

your humanity to awaken, and feel

pain, sorror, anger and grief - and act.

22.10.2024

IN THIS UNIVERSE, LIVES DON'T NECESSARILY CULMINATE IN A MEANINGFUL END THAT MAKES SENSE

There's a conspiracy theory that Albert Camus was

assassinated by the Soviet Union, that the car crash

that killed him was carefully orchestrated. An attempt

to build a narrative of martyrdom to culminate his life,

to give meaning and sense to what was an accident

resulting from coincidences, weather and reckless

driving without those building into anything

more than his and Gallimard's death, sorrow

that would blight the lives of loved ones.

If only there would have been a secret,

guiding hand, an ill plan that would have

stolen his life, then there would be meaning,

value, in his end. He would lay on stage

fallen a tragic hero, and it would all make

sense, as if there wasn't enough in his life

and work before without a meaningful end.

But real life isn't a tragedy by Racine.

22.10.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

THE 'WEST' AND GENOCIDE

"Never Again" has been turned in the 'West' to

"Never Again Will We Oppose a Genocide!"

22.10.2024

THE MORALITY OF THE ONE WALKING TO DEFEAT WAVING THE FLAG OF ISRAEL

You can't get Kamala Harris to condemn the rape

of Palestinian political prisoners by Israel's

occupation forces even when there's footage

of it in Israeli media.

22.10.2024

MAHASEN AL-KHATIB

Mahasen al-Khatib, a Palestinian visual artist aged 31,

had been sheltering under fire in her home for weeks

as Israel attacked her neighbourhood, when she made

an image of 19-year-old Shaaban al-Dalou burning

alive in an Israeli attack and posted it online.

A day later Israel bombed her family home

and killed her and her entire family.

22.10.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

WHY THE 'WEST' IS DOOMED TO FALL TO FASCISM

"Moderate" politicians can't understand

why them adopting Far-Right policies

and talking points, and demonizing

the progressives and the vulnerable

only leads to Far-Right victories.

22.10.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

KAMALA HARRIS ON HER WAY TO DEFEAT

Kamala Harris is walking to an electoral defeat

over the bodies of Palestinians and Lebanese

she helps Israel to kill, and the Democrats

are blaming of her coming defeat the people

who say she shouldn't have helped to kill

tens of thousands of women and children.

22.10.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

I REMEMBER WHEN HE HELPED TO CATCH KLAUS BARBIE, AND THIS YEAR...

When a former hunter of Nazi war criminals tells

the French people to vote for a party founded by

members of the Waffen-SS because that party

supports the genocide of Palestinians and will

"protect the Jews of France" from the Left which

opposes the ongoing genocide, you know that

Zionism is a lost cause, morally and politically.

22.10.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

ALL THOSE BRAVE PEOPLE

All those brave people courageously opposing

genocides that took place before their birth

silent about the genocides taking place

now - or shouting that those who oppose

them are racists that must be silenced, while

yet others celebrate, intoxicated by the suffering

they claimed they were sure to oppose if

they would have the chance.

21.10.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

A FLOOD OF MEMORIES

Thoughts flooded by memories, fragments of the past

broken on the floor of your mind, shattered vessels

that held shared moments, not enough pieces

to restore a single day, but enough to warm

you in this autumn night.

20.10.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

I CAN'T STAND SEEING MURDEROUS BASTARDS RAISED ON A PEDESTAL AND WORSHIPPED WHILE EVERYONE CAN SEE THEIR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

Why do you write so much about Israel's genocide

and Apartheid against Palestinians, and so little

about this conflict and that conflict and that

oppressive or regime or the other ones?

Because the murderous bastards in those

conflicts and ruling those regimes are not

praised by the high and mighty of the world,

are not praised by hundreds of millions

of supposedly normal and ordinary people

caught in a hateful bloodlust, are not

catered for by the media and the press,

are not adored for their atrocities.

End the genocide, occupation and Apartheid

and you will see me writing more against

those murderous bastards our 'Western'

world doesn't worship and adore.

20.10.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

LEMONS, SLOW INTERNET CONNECTION AND BOMBS

When the world gives you slow internet, translate Swinburne.

The verses don't protect against scurvy, don't drive away thirst,

but they keep you busy, make you forget for a moment that

bombs are crashing through roofs, falling through floors,

exploding killing entire frightened families, while the fate

of a genocidaire's villa is the top news for the press.

20.10.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

BAERBOCK AND BIDEN

Baerbock and Biden tell us they have seen atrocities

against Israelis which according to Israel never happened,

yet they are incapable of seeing the atrocities which

Israel inflicts on the Palestinians and the Lebanese

each day. They have a shared superpower, being

able to witness the imaginary and unable to see

to the broken bodies of little children whose

blood covers them both, who bones

crunch under their feet.

19.-20.10.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

THE STARS WILL NEVER TURN THEIR GAZE AWAY FROM HUMAN GRIEF

Too tired to walk in the golden light of the day

after a night spent raging against unfolding

massacres, I will now have to walk unlighted

lanes in darkness to keep this heart beating

longer in this world of unnecessary sorrow.

19.10.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

"THE HONEST BROKER"

According to the United States, while

the world allowed it to lead ceasefire

talks in occupied Palestine's Gaza,

it was in fact working together with

Israel to kill the leaders of Hamas,

instead of trying to achieve a ceasefire.

United States compliments itself

for this, and is very proud of what

it has done, tens of thousands killed.

and now, it says, is the true time

for a ceasefire, just trust us -

have we ever lied?

18.10.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE GERMANS, AGAIN

German politicians think that to atone

for their fathers and grandfathers' crimes

they must help Israel to commit a genocide,

that each time Israel kills a child

in Lebanon or Palestine,

a Jewish child killed

by the German politicians' forefathers

rises from the dead, Jewish blood

washed away with Arab blood.

17.10.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems

WHAT THE ISRAELI REGIME WOULD LIKE YOU TO BELIEVE

According to Israeli regime's occupation forces,

which posts images of Israel's occupation soldiers

as concentration camp prisoners, concentration

camp prisoners as Israel's occupation soldiers,

concentration camp survivors are keeping up Apartheid,

committing genocide, shooting 59-year-old women

in the back in their olive grove like today, according

to Israel concentration camp survivors are posting

Tik-Tok videos where they blow up universities

and entire neighbourhoods, and drive the tricycles

of slain and missing children, laughing maniacally.

According to Israel, concentration camp survivors

have done this, are doing all this just now.

No, Israel's occupation forces soldiers are

doing all that. No concentration camp prisoner

carries Israeli uniform while burning civilians alive,

it's the product of an Apartheid who does it.

They are committing war crimes and crimes

against humanity, and Israel is using concentration

camp prisoners, concentration camp survivors,

as human shields for Israel's atrocities.

17.10.2024

Verse #Verse Poetry #Poetry Poems #Poems Poem #Poems