The People Of My Land Today

They speak strange words
these people that come from my land
they grow legs and horns for sanguine stories
that sit on chairs
then rot as they unravel and run...
They trace images in the air
that only God
can read
they bite their native tongues
as they utter
these new words
like 'them' and 'us'
These people from my land
have released their grasp of their roots
The seas of enstrangement
have filled the hallows of their
sinking hearts
they dream different dreams
dominions where nightmares
touch the grounds
as they enter
with feet
that scream
to stamp a smoother end out.

Eye for Eye

(For Emily Henochowicz)

Sniped in the eye

before my vision

could savor the next ‘thirsty pixel’.

Blue skies

now charcoal

now crimson

and then no more…

Clouds pushing hard

for a way out of my socket…

Blue tears

streams and rivers

and then this drought

carves its bed in my face.

Know they, that I can spell

more names for color

than they ever tasted in their

mothers’ wombs?

Know they, that Yahweh

designed different dawns

for minds like mine?

Know they, that I am the same blood

that pulled that trigger…

And saw they, with their eyes

that can still see,

the horizons of their expiring aspirations

refracting?

If an eye was the cost,

my cause is not lost.

I did not fall.

Their humanity did.

_______________________________
My poem to Emily Henochowicz, a Jewish art student who lost her eye to an IDF sniper when protesting the Gaza flotilla incident.

My Country...My Country

You have a beautiful house
in a faraway country.

It used to be your home...

But I don't have a country
anymore Mother...

I don't anymore, have a country.

They laid Aunt Nahida to rest,
with all the rest,
tormented,
questioning,
her burial in a faraway country.

She too, no longer has a country.

You put the cobalt-blue china vases away Mother.
The Rahal paintings, you placed,
on the walls of a house of stone...not brick,
and you tried to call this house,
your home,
in a faraway country.

Please don't tell me, I have a house, Mother.

You too, ...you don't have a house!

You too Mother,
you too,
you no longer...
have a country.