WHEN REALITY STANDS IN THE WAY OF IDEOLOGY

The most essential part

in supporting Apartheid Israel

is the complete ignoring of reality,

embracing a fictional universe

that 'justifies' factual crimes.

10.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

AS THE BODY OF A DEAD TODDLER HANGS LIMP

I watch how a dead toddler's body is

recovered from a house in Gaza

bombed by the Israeli occupation,

and the 'West' keeps talking

endlessly about "Israeli hostages"

like their situation would be

the great affront and the murder

of dozens of children each day

the most natural and just thing

in the entire blighted world.

10.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

I UNFOLLOWED THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE RED CROSS

(Originally I attributed this claim directly to the ICRC

president Spoljaric, but the press source apparently put

together her comment and a separate ICRC comment.)

Today I unfollowed the ICRC,

International Committee of the Red Cross,

on Twitter after it demanded

freedom to Israeli captives in Gaza

while refusing to demand the same

for Palestinian captives held by Israel.

According to the ICRC,

it's enought that Israel "notifies"

ICRC about Palestinian captives,

that it "treats them humanely",

and allows it and families to visit them.

No freedom demanded for them.

Freedom, according to the ICRC -

so it seems based on its declaration -

is reserved for the occupier Israelis,

and imprisonment reserved

for occupied Palestinians.

So I unfollowed ICRC,

the International Committee of the Red Cross.

It has becomes racist pandering

to Israeli regime, dividing people

based on their ethnic-religious identities,

ending up declaring that one label

means captives carrying it deserve freedom,

another that captives don't deserve freedom.

So to the ICRC human beings

given the latter label, the occupied

Palestinians, are like cattle in a cattle pen,

or captured beasts in a zoo, or slaves

whose slavery is approved by the Red Cross.

Not equal human beings to Israelis

in the eyes of the Red Cross.

So, let the Israelis retweet ICRC

from now on. I'm sure they won't.

10.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

TERRORISTS AND CIVILIANS

According to Israeli media,

5-year-old Palestinian children

are "terrorists",

while according to 'Western' media,

adult Israel's occupation soldiers

are teenage "civilians".

09.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

WHAT REMAINS OF A DAY

drinking coffee

with milk

reading poems

a high fantasy novel

18.01.2014

EDUARD MANET'S "OLYMPIA"(1863)

The eyes don't meet ours, we are outsiders

to the scene, uninvited; if we had any decency,

we would leave, yet we linger, the peeping-toms,

taking it all in, from the unapproving cat that

notices us when the women don't, to every

part of the naked body - a body whose sake

we are here, voyers all - but, there is

something 'wrong' here, something beyond

the titillation we came seeking, something

that clothes her safe from our perversions.  

Her gaze is an inward one, lost in thought,

and the flowers shown of no importance.

Just another 'admirer' seeking an audience

in her bed, after another has, perhaps,

just vacated it. Much more is taking place

behind that gaze than ever did on this

bed. Sweating hands may touch the bed

and the alabaster body reclining on

it, and blood-swelled organs may

penetrate the body, but they will never

penetrate that gaze. We should go.

06.12.2023-08.03.2024

#Lyrics #Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ZIONISTS

Apartheid Israel returned 47 bodies

it had dug up from cemeteries in

occupied Palestine's Gaza Strip

and as replies to a video showing

the reburial in a mass grave

Zionists are posting laughing emojis,

"Good!",  "Pallywood!", how all the dead

were "terrorists" and so forth.

And elsewhere they will write

how terribly afraid they are

when they hear the words

"Ceasefire", "Free Palestine",

"From the River to the Sea"

and "Intifada".

08.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ZIONISM IS NOW COMMITTING THE GENOCIDE

Israeli Zionists want to roleplay

Jews during the Holocaust,

and so, while they are killing

a hundred people per day,

we get them posting collages

of concentration camp prisoners

and Israeli occupation soldiers

and images of armoured bulldozers

destroying Palestinian homes

with "This Time We Fight Back!"

Zionists want to roleplay

Jews during the Holocaust

but to claim a status of a victim

you need to be the victim,

not the one who is

committing the genocide.

08.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

GENOCIDE IN OCCUPIED PALESTINE

The only language

that Zionists speak

is cruelty.

08.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

AGAINST NATIONALISM

The state, country, nation

in which you live in

is not for you,

it's not your

state, country, nation

if you are not wealthy.

The flag doesn't fly for you,

and all those oaths and songs

they teach you to repeat

as the flag flutters in

the wind are but lies,

for the place you live in

doesn't exist for your sake,

it doesn't provide for you,

it takes from you, it uses you,

it makes you live a reduced

life, to chase mirages it throws

up to hide what it is,

for whom it exists.

The wealthy people, 

those who have

so that you won't.

Their dreams are fulfilled,

the state, country, nation

echoes from their voice.

The flag flies for them, and all

the oaths are made for them.

The state, country, nation

is a mirror reflecting

their smirking visage,

their wealth

and the doors they

closed before you.

The state, country, nation

is your mass grave

and their monument.

08.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

REAL GENOCIDES, FAKE TEARS

The Holocaust is real,

it's a monstrous

lie to deny it,

but as we can see in Gaza,

all those tears shed

for its victims

by the powerful people

leading powerful countries,

must have been fake,

as now that they had

a chance to stop a genocide

they are supporting it.

08.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

HOW ISRAEL CAN COMMIT A GENOCIDE

How can a state founded on Holocaust

commit a genocide? utter Apartheid

Israel's supporters.

The hardcore ones meaning its

impossible Israel would do what

our eyes confirm it's doing,

the sofcore ones wavering,

starting to lose faith,

questioning it.

But Zionists never drew

from the Holocaust any universal

lesson that a genocide is wrong.

To them it was wrong

that Jews were the main victims,

not that a genocide is wrong.

As long as a genocide

is committed by the Israeli

regime or its allies,

there is nothing wrong

in it, to Zionists. That's how

Israel can commit a genocide.

08.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

LIKE A CAT VOMITING FURBALLS

Sometimes, often, you

need to write yourself

up from the dark abyss,

to put what is inside on

the outside, in words, like

a cat vomiting furballs.

08.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ZIONISM

Zionism is Colonialism.

Zionism is Ethnic Cleansing.

Zionism is Apartheid.

Zionism is Military Occupation.

Zionism is Genocide.

28.02.-08.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

FAR TOO LATE

What do you when

your entire life

has been misspent,

when the lives

of others have been

damaged

because you threw

your life away?

And theirs with it.

What is there

to be done?

Nothing.

08.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

PESSIMISM

It has been over

a long time.

But denial

has sustained

an illusion

of hope.

Feeble sapling

of hope,

that never

started to grow,

but some people,

many people,

haven't had

even that.

And yet, they

still struggle on.

08.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

SYSTEM-WIDE FAILURE

Failure. Complete,

utter and total

failure.

But that's not

the worst, far, far

from it.

Because no failure

is limited to the one

experiencing it.

It affects all

around them, pulling

their lives into its wake.

Lives forever altered,

diminished, made less

than they should've been,

affecting all

around them, pulling lives

into their own wake.

08.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

SUPPORTERS OF ISRAEL

They are already mocking the five

Palestinians, including two children,

who died when US air-dropped

aid package, suffering parachute

failure, hit them in Gaza Strip.

08.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

DISTURB THEM

 You think that your existence

is a form of resistance

but they don't care

about your existence

or your absence,

only about disturbance

in their existence.

08.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

IN THE MAZE

You run and run but

you run in a maze

that has no exit;

you've always been

here, never wandered

in, that exit

outside sought

is but an illusion

planted in your mind.

Stand still, where

you are will do when

there's no exit.

08.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

IT WORKS BOTH WAYS

People forget what you have

given them, and only remember

what you owe them, according

to their rules. But then, that

is the case with ourselves,

we remember what we

are owed, less what

we were given.

08.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

LITTLE MORE THAN BEASTS

For men not brought up

in a sphere of near unbroken

toxic masculinity, it still has been

a long project to grow enough

as human beings to understand

the inner lives of women. Privilege

makes learning slow, especially

about other human beings. And

these modern boys and young

men drowned in toxic masculinity,

you can nearly write them

off, remove from the ranks

of humanity, so little hope

remains for them to become

more than beasts.

07.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THEATER PERFORMANCES

Nobody will be surprised, those

who will learn. Many will not, wouldn't

care if would find out. It's not their

fault, it was never their duty, to step up.

Theirs was to flow past, unacknowledging,

 or to climb onto the theatre stage,

as acts were repeated with the same

well-rehearsed indifference,

and offering of perfunctory hope

the script demanded must be thrown,

like a bone lacking meat, for there

was nothing else. A mere earning

of a salary didn't mean they should

care or give a changing performance.

It was not what they were paid for.

Who thought otherwise was a fool.

07.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE ILLUSION OF ESCAPE

There is no way out;

perhaps there is nothing

outside, has never been.

There was never a door

that could have been

opened, closed, locked,

whose key gone missing.

No, never a door to exit,

never something outside

to be entered. Those framed

vistas on the walls not

windows, but misguided

creations of the imagination,

opening only into delusions.

It was always like this, all

mere futile visions of leaving,

expanding into what never was.

07.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

GREATER THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS

Few things truly matter,

when you really think about it,

and even those not that much.

Fleeting, ephemeral things. No

one else will remember them.

Yet they wove the web of life,

they were its vibrating strings.

Together they were us.

07.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

LETHAL BEAUTY

A spider's web glimmering

in the sun, a work of art,

a tool to snare and kill

and devour, a beauty

crossing the air, making

it a killing field.

07.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE CRUELTY OF A LIFE THAT MUST HAVE BEEN

L'Odalisque(c. 1745), known as The Brunette

Odalisque, by Francois Boucher(1703-1770)

This is the Boucher you can admire with

something approaching a clean conscience,

as there is nothing beyond the painted image

known of its subject; the other odalisque

a tale of abuse, venereal disease, because

we know the subject, the victim who can't

be made into a mere object as intended

by the painter. Here there's nothing but

the paint. A lifetime of sadness could have

spread both directions in time from

the moment the painter's brush had

captured her features, yet all that is

hidden from our gaze, hidden from our

mind that suspects the cruelty of a life

that must have been, yet desires

to caress the illusion of flesh long

gone from the bones.

07.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THIS IS WHAT THE 'WEST' SUPPORTS

27 Palestinians kidnapped

from Gaza by Israel's occupation forces

have died 'during interrogations'.

This is what the 'West' supports,

feverishly: Torture and murder.

07.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

'WESTERN VALUES'

When having to choose between

their supposed, vaunted 'values'

and a genocide,

the 'Western' conservatives and

liberals have chosen genocide.

Yet they still keep talking about their

"American Values", "British values",

"European values" and so forth,

while they are supporting a genocide,

while they are supporting a genocide.

07.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

25 000 CHILDREN AND WOMEN

According to the United States, there

should only be a short ceasefire in Gaza

and that solely so that Israeli captives

would be freed.

After they have been freed, Israel

can continue the slaughter

as long as it wants, says

the United States,

because, according to the USA,

Hamas must be destroyed

and Israel can't waste this opportunity,

no matter the Palestinian death toll.

(But not Islamic Jihad or a dozen other

armed resistance groups apparently,

as the USA expects that no one

in 'Murica knows about them.)

The lives of Palestinians

don't matter at all to the USA

and it doesn't even have the brains

to pretend that they do.

It just goes on about

"Israeli hostages! Israeli hostages!"

while admitting that Israel has killed

25 000 children and women.

07.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

GENOCIDE IN ISRAELI OCCUPIED PALESTINE

To Chancellor Olaf Scholz

"It can't be a genocide,

because we support it!"

From the governments

and organizations who

gave the world:

"It can't be Apartheid,

because we support it!"

05.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

TODAY IN HUWWARA

Israel's occupation forces have shot

two men in Huwwara, on the occupied

West Bank of Palestine, and are not

allowing ambulances to reach them.

The confirmation of deaths is yet

to come, but it will, it will come,

Israeli occupation soldiers

make sure that it will.

Muhammad Hisham Shehada,

aged 16, was announced dead

later today. He was shot in head.

05.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

HUNGER: GAZA STRIP AND THE YARMOUK REFUGEE CAMP

The images arriving now from Gaza,

of children and the elderly

dying of starvation,

their skeletal bodies

like Egyptian mummies

given modern clothing,

bring back images of Yarmouk,

of the 194 who starved to death

there during the refugee camp's

long siege by the Syrian regime.

The world watched, and now as

the Israeli regime starves Gaza,

Gaza whose population is fourteen times

that of the 'capital of the Palestinian

diaspora' back in 2011,

the world again watches, the world finds

excuses it never found for the Syrian regime,

and the skeletal bodies, they are the same.

04.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

"NEVER AGAIN" TURNED OUT TO BE JUST "AGAIN"

The prominent people who condemned

and mourned past genocides, who declared

they would steadfastedly oppose one

in their time, these prominent people

are now, most, either silent or are

supporting a genocide. They claimed

vocally themselves different from people

of the past, those who allowed atrocities,

and now turned out to be exactly like those

when came time for history to test them.

05.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

UNDER THE RUBBLE OF JOURNALISM

Not a single headline about the genocide

in Israeli occupied Palestine's Gaza Strip

has made the frontpages of Finnish media.

210 people murdered by Israel's occupation

forces in the last 24 hours, and not a single

article. Erased, obliterated from view,

like a neighbourhood in Gaza by Israeli

bombs and missiles, all the bodies hidden

away, buried under the rubble of journalism.

04.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE SLAUGHTER NEVER CEASED

The 'West' mourns the audience of Sderot Cinema,

not the people whose slaughter the Israeli audience

then watched with a wink, not the people whose

slaughter has gone on, unceasing, ever since.

04.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

AMR NAJJAR, AGE TEN

Two photos:

Amr Najjar, age ten,

holds a picture of

the solar system.

Amr Najjar, age ten,

in the morgue,

shot in head by Israel.

04.03.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

EXCUSE FOR MY CURRENT BAD POETRY

These are inferior

poems for an inferior

time; let them be,

they are signs of

life, that the tree

stump still lives.

29.02.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

WE HAVE THE PAST

The past is where our hopes

flourish, where the tomorrow

brightly beckons; the past

is our golden land, where

spring to summer turns.

While here, in this fleeting

moment, the mind turns

to what has been and

the promises that

never came true.

29.02.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

20 PEOPLE KILLED BY ISRAELI OCCUPATION FORCES IN A MASSACRE IN GAZA

Israel killed Palestinian journalist

Motasem Dalloul's pregnant

wife and 3-year-old son yesterday

during a massacre in Gaza Strip.

The 'Western' press ignores

this, just like it ignored when

he was wounded by Israel's

occupation forces' sniper

while covering the Great Return

March in May 2018.

Ignoring, hiding what happens,

is the 'Western' press' preferred

way of doing journalism

when it comes Apartheid

Israel's war crimes.

29.02.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

TODAY IN ISRAELI OCCUPIED PALESTINE

Each day news of children starving

to death in Gaza; each day talk of

'a hostage deal'. Only occupation

soldiers, inhabitants of segregated

Apartheid communities matter,

taken as prisoners of war. Not

the Hares Boys, not Samer Issawi,

wrong ethnicity, wrong religion,

they're victims and occupied, not

oppressors and colonialists.

One hundred, two hundred

killed each day, yet only

'hostages, hostages'. There

are 9000 Palestinian hostages

in Israeli occupation prisons,

5.3 million under military boot.

But they are subhuman, unworthy

- only the fallen lords of Apartheid,

bombed by their own, matter

to the 'West' in its decrepit old age.

28.02.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

FALLING

The days fall towards the distant

spring, the light grows yet gray.

The winter endures, solitude

between birth of light and dark.

The hours, bare of life, raise

their grim branches against

the dim dawn and dusk.

The night embraces, the night

gives release, hiding stars

distant and close.

28.02.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

TWEETING THE GENOCIDE

I eat black bread with coffee

at midnight and tweet about

people who haven't eaten

for days, children who starve

to death. I know how it

feels to be hungry, to

have not eaten for days.

But that was a choice.

Now millions are starved

because their oppressors

want to punish them

for their fighters daring

to attack their enslavers,

the lords of Apartheid

in their military bases

and their segregated

plantations, their city

built on the ruins

of an ethnically

cleansed village.

People are starved

because freedom

and liberty are only

for the oppressors,

for those who can

carry out a genocide.

28.02.2024

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse