tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61625635234497584882024-03-14T04:55:37.908-07:00Fly Me to Yanoun And Back. An outsider's experience of the West Bank.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00918894459243803918noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162563523449758488.post-61566285210166993182015-03-16T12:48:00.001-07:002015-03-16T12:57:32.862-07:00For a Baby Goat. And for Kate, Who's love of Baby Goats knows no bounds. <div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">When evil kept me awake in my bed <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">And suffering howled through my veins, like
a foul wind.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">I rose to find you, baby goat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Just now discharged upon the earth, a
mucusy jewel of life, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">all skin n’ bones n’ floundering brightly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Held in peace, the hum of a farm's biorhythm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">You are the gravity that bends light around
distant stars.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The old brass key that fits no door. The
stumbling block. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Hungry bleats of vulnerability,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">legs like twigs that tremble with life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The problem in this world is not evil, but
goodness! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Your infantile innocence defiantly contradicts.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Contradicts the genocides, homicides,
terrorism, racism, greed and pollution, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">that cast the Earth's dark shadow. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">These evils makes sense, a thread connects
them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">and weaves through every broken human
heart.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">But you do not make sense little goat,
filled with light. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">You have come from nowhere and suddenly you
are there<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Shivering and sublime among the thorns and
wild flowers,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Unashamedly existing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Adorable eyes daring me not to hate, daring
me not to fall into despair.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">You are licked clean, baptized in a mothers
love. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">And off you wander, to sniff a flower,
trip on a pebble<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">And be a light to the world. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Baby goat, just born. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00918894459243803918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162563523449758488.post-7192856442881586002015-03-01T10:18:00.001-08:002015-03-01T10:21:07.867-08:00For the Girl Who Has Never Seen the Ocean<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Cumulus clouds expand and contract in the
sky's loom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">She stares them down. She stares them down
and the mountains <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">They swoon before her innocence, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">before her dark eyes that pierce and gleam
like sun off a fetid pool.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">She sits upon her throne, a school<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">now merely
twisted lumps of metal and concrete, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">a wound from the earth, a place to plant
her feet <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">and watch valley walls rise to a sapphire
roof.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">What is this thing in the grown, that must
own or despise the innocence of youth?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Destroy passion and compromise hope. These
pour off kids like grace, like joy off of starlings <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">weaving between golden shafts of light. This
dark, grown-up thing covers her sight,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">covers here future in apathy and disillusion.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This fierce Bedouin, barefoot upon her
school in ruin. In her valley <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">which has swallowed a thousand graves in
its rich soil <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">who's tents have seen a thousand births and
caves that hold a thousand stories. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Her father tries to tell her some, but she
has now only worries of what her life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">And her children’s lives will become. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">But late at night, as she lies curled on
her mat, between mother and sisters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The wind whispers through the tent flaps,
the smell of ocean on its tail<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">She dreams of climbing these valley walls,
like her father and uncle used to.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">She dreams white sails of distant ships skimming
upon the sea she has never seen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">She hears the foam capped waves whip the rocky
shoreline <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">as gulls wheel and spin and dive dissolute into
the murky brine. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This chaos makes sense.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This uncontrollable thing, so deep and
dense, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Smothers many lives under its surface, but nurtures
many more. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">It cannot be tamed, not even by the shore
that holds it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The ideologies of the grown own, occupy and
oppress. They devour the girl's youth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">They bind her to these valley walls. But
truth, like the ocean cannot be bound,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">only found in chaos and ever-shifting
waters. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">And justice, like water, always flows downwards.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Finding the lowest places to lay – and oh, this
valley lays low. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Sitting in the unjust low, the still-point
of the broken world, she waits <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">with the patience of the oppressed. The chaos
of wild things<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">churning in her chest, burning in her
fierce eyes <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This girl, who has never seen the ocean.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00918894459243803918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162563523449758488.post-25838884953453626642015-01-28T07:43:00.000-08:002015-01-28T07:43:18.406-08:00For Abdul Odim, Mayor of QusraOctober's harvest finds him between planted rows of olives<br />
keeping one eye on his work and one on the hills<br />
that's where the trouble comes from<br />
But today I find him in a cold, grey office<br />
typing on a keyboard too small for his cracked and swollen farmer's hands<br />
a reluctant mayor of a crumbling West Bank village<br />
His dank office is filled with photographs - gruesome, faded pictures of twisted, bruised faces<br />
broken limbs and spirits.<br />
These photographs, dog-eared from holding, tell stories of his townsfolk, his loved ones<br />
crushed by a machine that must oppress and destroy<br />
and feed on the souls of the vulnerable to grow<br />
it eats rocks and bullets and unbridled hatred<br />
turns them into fuel<br />
into tools to justify its violent course<br />
Pictures sit around his desk like a shrine with sad and swollen watching eyes<br />
reminding him of his failure. Reminding him of his duty<br />
reminding him. Reminding<br />
Always reminding.<br />
<br />
Settlers charge through the mayor's village one day, screaming<br />
our roots run deeper than these olive trees!<br />
they saw the ancient, twisted growths off at the base<br />
so nothing would be taller than they, when their feet rooted into the grey, stony earth<br />
They shoot their weapons and hurl their insults, as zealots do<br />
they roll burning tires into the mosque, like fiery prayers with suffocating incense<br />
but they are not prayers to the mayor's God<br />
the mayor's God lives in the tilled soil, the cut olive trees, the cracks in his hands<br />
the mayor's God sings with rain and fills the hillsides with poppies<br />
<br />
The reluctant mayor wipes cement dust from his old boots<br />
he'd been laying a floor in the widow's barn, hoping it would set before the rains came<br />
I'm a builder, he thinks. A farmer. A husband and father<br />
my work is in the soil. Not a war<br />
but planting fields is political around here<br />
With his trimmed moustache and strong, pointed nose, he reminds me of a hawk<br />
tired, grey-rimmed eyes gazing down upon a shattered landscape. A shrinking map<br />
above, day-blind stars scatter endlessly beyond the reach of his wings<br />
A caged hawk. Caged by abstruse power, chained to the stones of his field<br />
chained to the photographs that decorate his office wall<br />
burnt forever under his eyelids, a harsh reminder - that all is not well in this place<br />
a reminder to never forget those sad, swollen eyes. Broken limbs and spirits<br />
Reminding him. Reminding<br />
always reminding.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00918894459243803918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162563523449758488.post-91963634680071320592015-01-25T11:23:00.001-08:002015-01-25T11:23:32.001-08:00Happy Invasion Day!! A reflection on imperialism <div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">It's Australia Day and I'm in Palestine. I
can't help but draw parallels between the two countries – the two stories of
invasion, displacement and imperialism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">On January 26<sup>th</sup>, 1788 the
British flag was raised in Sydney Cove for the first time. A day some celebrate
as the colonisation of <i>Terra Nullius</i>. For others it commemorates a day
of invasion, grief and survival. A day a people lost their land and their
identity. May 15<sup>th</sup>,<sup> </sup>1948 is celebrated as the day the
state of Israel was officially established. Known by Israelis as <i>Yom
Ha'atzmaut</i> (Independence Day). To the Palestinian people this day is called<i>
The Nakba </i>(the day of disaster) where over 700,000 people were forcefully
removed from their land.<sup><o:p></o:p></sup></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Both Yom Ha'atzmaut and Australia Day are
days that can only truly be celebrated by the powerful. The conquerors. They
are celebrations of one races victory, at the expense of another. Of course
these are not uncommon stories; the world's map has been shaped by violent conquest,
occupation and displacement. But on this day celebrated by the country I call
home, I sit in a tiny West Bank village surrounded by razor wire and landmines,
fighter jets occasionally flying overhead and I wonder…Why? Why does it have to
be this way and why we must celebrate it? The tactics of imperialism that have
displaced Australia's First Nation people are the same tactics being used here
in Palestine. In fact they are the same tactics used against the Jews in WW2. A
people group have been scapegoated. Laws are established to segregate, oppress and
demoralise. They are dehumanised through government and media propaganda. A
people are dehumanized and become the enemy. Terrible acts of violence and hate
are done to them, while many stand idle, apathetic or unaware of the abuse. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Hate instills hate. A friend of mine here, a
journalist, asked a Palestinian teenager at a check-point what their favourite
memory was. The boy gave a gap-toothed smiled and responded, "the first
time I threw a rock at a soldier". Violence is conditioned into the
children here, on both sides of the wall. Israeli teenagers become trigger-happy
soldiers, heads full of Zionistic nationalism. And the rock throwing boy
becomes the crazed bomber on the bus, the axe-wielder in the synagogue.
Desperate to feel powerful, if even for a moment. The imperialistic system that
has shaped Australia, and is shaping Israel/Palestine demands such responses.
It pulls us into its web and it seems you must either conform, lash out with what
force you can muster, or be crushed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">But I believe there is another way. Or at
least I have faith there is. It is the way of hope – the way of creativity, joy
and nonviolence. My Palestinian friend Ghassan told me, "no matter what,
we must have hope. Without hope, there is no life". Hope manifests itself
here in art, poetry, music, clown schools and theatre groups that resist the
occupation by creating beauty and life, like any thriving society should. They
tell another story – one that doesn't involve guns or violence. This Way (I
believe it deserves a capital) is beyond the system of Us versus Them, Tribe versus
Tribe, that an imperialist empire relies on to function. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">So today I choose not to celebrate, b</span>ecause to celebrate what the 26th stands for, is to accept and legitimize a broken system. But I do choose to hope. I hope for a day that I can truly celebrate this Day – with boxing
kangaroos temporary tattooed on my face, Australian flag adorning my shoulders
as a cape, twirling wildly as I dance to the JJJ hottest 100. Celebrating alongside
those who have been displaced by Australian imperialism, but are now empowered
and included in a free society.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The system is enticing. Look at how our
indigenous brothers and sisters, the homeless, asylum seekers and any who don't
fit the societal mold, are still being treated today. We are fooling ourselves
if we say we are not the same nation we were 200 years ago. The roots run too
deep. But it is the nonviolent, creative resistance I see here and back home that
make me think it doesn't always have to be this way. There is another another Way to walk - another story to create. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00918894459243803918noreply@blogger.com2