As with every movement swell, I find myself wondering
how so many never get caught up in the waves
flooding the pavement, pleading for bombs/IOF/colonizers to let
G A Z A
Live.
What moves me that overlooks you?
I wonder if it’s the stories, the one’s I assume everyone must know.
The stories of violence & the structures that flame extraction & smoke life to dust.
The dream & the myth of democracy;
The protagonist indoctrinated me, and it began to
fracture.
Remember Guillermo being black listed? At fourteen, for daring to move against the US-backed Somoza regime.
& Jimmy’s memory of fleeing amongst the cattle,
his mother dreaming her son never live a child soldier;
like the other babies recruited to kill in the name of the USA’s flavor of ‘democracy.’
& Teresa, who welcomed us open hearted, knowing full well
the government who issued my passport massacred each of her
parents
siblings
[nearly all] her community.
She was six years old at the time; I wonder if she knew this is what they called “justice for all.”
With Teresa’s home shrinking at our backs, the air caught in my chest
& the heaving came; the kind where heartsickness reverberates & cracks each of my ribs.
Will it ever stop?
The years tick, and these tired tactics remain.
My heart continues to splinter, today with a Palestinian father pressing his lips to his son’s chubby feet,
placing cookies in his tiny hands,
left still with the other martyrs stolen by airstrikes.
The US blessing dictators with boats of cartridges & bombs,
Our taxes lacing proxy wars with recycled terror rhetoric & the insatiable
thirst for blood
& land
& oil.
I wonder if you’d met them, the assembly of children
terrorized by the country that claims to fight for freedom for all.
Would you be called to move with us?
Remember, it’s never too late.
If you’ve been too afraid, that doesn’t mean we don’t need your voice.
There’s still time to explore the possibility that you’ve been lied to,
& to pick up the thread that weaves us together.
To invite a world free, one where we don’t need to look away
Because we’ve laid the crusade complex to rest.
Remember, it’s never too late.
