Shattered

 

How painfully innocence dies in cherubic brown faces,

Some unbroken still gambol in the phosphorous rubble,

These within a mother's or kindred's tethering gaze, 

Allah's silent through munition blasts or murmured prayer.

Shattered,

Faith,

Hope,

Love.

Ammad, beautiful boy sheltering in dangerous places,

Hellfire bursts over, under, around, his tender frame,

Despondent dad gently cups Ammad's sallow cheeks, 

Asunder his gory remains. Pleas ending in blank stares.

Shattered.

Son.

Heart.

Love.

Amna, kind girl, bravely offering kin simple graces,

Fetching water when water is marked by munitions,

Remnant relatives ever mourn in her empty spaces, 

In this place of pain and nations n'er giving a care.

Shattered.

Daughter.

Despair.

Love.

Sidra, from Gaza to Rafah found no safe places,

"Gospel" guided bombs erased her shrinking world,

Died she of the blast or the shredding of her frame,

Feet frayed, spiked to a wall, hanging in mid-air,

Shattered.

Shattered.

Shattered.

Love.

Ammad Al-Najjar

Amna al-Mufti

Sidra Hassouna

Angels Burning

 

How you have fallen from heaven,

    morning star, son of the dawn!

Angel of light, resonating beatific in the presence of love,

Of God, in God, with God, unconsumed blinding coal,

Walking starfields that pined and paled in your wake.

Such grace bestowed. 

Even thou, when eyes then love aver, writhing in hate

For the beautiful, the pure. Fear, fellowship wear old,

In burning cold shadows, exiled and ever unbeloved.

Angels burning,

Stars collapsing,

Weeping,

Weeping.

Sons and daughters of stardust, earth dust and breath,

Imago Dei, defiled, defiling afore gory golden calves.

Baal, Molech, Eros, Mammon. Ravenous filth-wraiths.

The gifts corrode.

Each hubris tribe, Babel builders, spurn the ancient faith,

Each spews out the seed to engorge the worthless chaff,

In the icy darkness their daemons draw them into death.

Angels burning,

Moon blackening,

Gnashing,

Teeth gnashing.

Bread, Wine, and Spirit, rekindle the dormant gospel,

Arsenals to ploughs, the undiscovered country beckons.

Still, hope burns as a cathedral candle pierces shades.

Love, Faith, Hope harrowed.

Charlatan prophets smear as true confessions fade.

In this prism of infamy, God's love, God's heaven,

Char hellish as devils enlist sin-seasoned apostles.

Angles burning.

Temples falling.

Sorrowing.

Sorrowing.

Walking and waking and wandering,

That which I would not do,

Pulls as an ancient murky tide,

In me.

Do not show me your hands and feet.

I cannot meet your gaze.

Your benevolent gaze.

Angels burning.

Gnarled spirit lamenting.

Breaths sighing,

Prayers sighing.

"In his hands I saw a great golden spear, 

and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire. 

This he plunged into my heart several times 

so that it penetrated to my entrails. 

When he pulled it out, I felt that he took them with it, 

and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God."

(St. Theresa of Avila)

Blessed

 

Blessed are poor of Spirit,

    Lampooning the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they who cause to mourn,

    for they will be good 'ole boys.

Ploughshares melted into weapons of war.

Orphan, and mother, father, brother, sister,

Drinking the dregs, though hemlock is bitter,

 Death will quiet reaper' bomb's savage roar.

Blessed when you trample the meek,

   Removing the native borns from the earth.

Blessed those whose gluttony and thirst leads to excess,

    for they will be overfilled.

Songs of liberty lure exiles to concrete cages,

Survivor, and mother, father, brother, sister,

Seized and disposed of, like so much litter,

Erased from our lives as whitewashed pages.

Blessed are the powerful,

   And those void of all mercy.

Blessed are the stony hearted,

    for they will remake god in their image.

Bitter as the augur bells in steeples peel,

Bereaved, and mother, father, brother, sister,

Liturgies drone o'er lament -- faithful shiver --

While goons drag them from where they kneel. 

Blessed are warmongering peacemakers,

   Whose munitions slaughter the children of God.

Blessed are those who feel persecuted because of covetousness,

    for theirs is the kingdom of the prince of the power of the air.

Innocent blood, broken bodies, spirits bewail, 

Slaughtered, mother, father, brother, sister,

Palestinian life, the complicit never consider,

Zionist credo metes out death at genocide scale.

If the salt loses its saltiness, 

It is no longer good for anything, 

except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

Blessed,

Cursed,

Dereliction.

Gleaning Beloved

A weary Palestine dragged without mercy into the dawning,

Blood red, the sky radiates a carnage flowing, and ebbing,

Impassive voices drone smugly from a handful of receivers.

The breathing, resigned, amble t'ward smoldering rubble,

Neighbor to stranger remove stone and soil and nubble,

Unearthing the maim and murder wrought by unbelievers,

Beloved flesh, enmeshed in endless rubble, putrefying. 

Frail, worn, gleaning broken beloved in the mourning.

Gleaning beloved,

Gleaning beloved,

Gleaning.

One Jida* finds the head of her dear haffid,*

A bloodied sabiun saghir* wails, 

Next to his sweet 'ukht,* silent, halved.

One gentle 'ab,* wraps the shattered remains,

His beautiful bint,* now so much sinew and blood.

So much sinew and blood.

Gleaning beloved.

Stone-hearted, the nations walk t'ward their judgement,

Grossly insatiable in this bedeviled pursuit of power.

Each complicit as the wealth of the nations consume,

The limbs, bodies, minds, dreams, spirits, of Palestinians,

Crushed, torn, burned alive, erased, by western munitions,

As autocrats and despots haggle over Gaza's massed tomb,

It's emaciated people, their life-blood ebb, hour by hour.

Harsh the sentence, on whom their welfare was incumbent. 

Gleaning beloved,

Gleaning beloved,

Gleaning.

Will come that day of perfect justice.

Where the gleaning will be at an end,

When torn asunder families, spirits, 

and bodies broken beneath the sod,

Will be reborn of tears and Spirit.

Jida, haffid, sabiun saghir, '

ukht,  'ab, bindt, and families.

Who did not see these,

Another ending will unfold.

Gleaning beloved.

‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, 

into the eternal fire prepared for the devil 

and his angels. 

For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, 

I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 

I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

I was bombed for your greed and you did not see me.

I was cast from my home and my people were tormented.

I had to glean the ruins for my children, and you didn't rend your hearts.

Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, 

You did not do for me.’+

 

Arabic family words from poem.

* Jida / Grandmother

* Haffid / Grandson

* sabiun saghir / young boy

* 'ukht / sister

* 'ab / Father

* bint / Daughter 

+Adapted from Matthew 25: 41-45 family words from poem.

Sickness Unto Death

 

What a piece of work is a man!

how noble in reason!

how infinite in faculty!

in form and moving how express and admirable!

in action how like an angel!

in apprehension how like a god!

the beauty of the world!

the paragon of animals! (1)

The Word of our bards, poets, and prophets,

The elixir to despair, the blood of the holy grail,

Forgotten or worse, betrayed in the unknowing,

Of knowing without knowing, or ever loving,

The Self,

The Self in the Other,

The Self in God.

This Word of life, from these scrolls, dries, crackles, 

Back to dust, the Spirit receding behind the vale.

The paragon alone, neither knows nor apprehends,

A vanity, an iconoclastic mime, signifying nothing.

The Ego,

The Ego Alone,

The Ego Infidel.

Word for lies are bartered. A soothing emptiness.

Chest thumping, hollow boasts betray and bewail.

'Ere angel muses are discerned,  'ere cooly dismissed,

For demonic tongues, an apprenticeship in hating.

The Being,

The Being forlorn,

The Being damned.

Yet this Word abides in lives received and then given.

Not in parchment nor pixels -- on human hearts, frail,

Lives of love and faltering faithfulness, wayfaring,

Dying, Baptism, Communion -- salvation in becoming,

The Beloved,

The Beloved Child,

The Beloved loving,

The Beatific One.

1. Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2: