Today is a day when poetry and art speak for themselves. I think it is the 160th day of genocide, nearly 6 months since October 7th and we’ve seen things go from bad to worse with regard to the human rights of Palestinian peoples. Israel, U.S and the European powers who have big investments of profit and guilt in Israel are laughing all the way to the next $500 billion dollar oil reserve found near the Gaza beaches and its sea of fishermen. Starvation is becoming another tactic to slaughter civilians and children. Gaza is a concentration camp.

Meanwhile, across the globe, the situation in Haiti is deteriorating to the point of no return. Another destroyed state in a nation that experienced the longest-running embargo and debt load for daring to overthrow plantation slavery in 1804 after a decades long struggle. The world we live in is showing her true colours, and they are blood red and dollar green. The pretence of social consensus has been ripped off like the band -aid it’s always been. Yet “they” exhort us to vote when voting and democratic principles seem to mean nothing. It reminds me of the old adage “If voting solved anything, they’d make it illegal”. We’ve seen this– as millions have protested internationally with regard to Palestine, and yet no permanent or even temporary ceasefire is in place. Political negotiations seem even more distant than on October 7th.

Below I’ve shared my own work and that of others in an effort to remind ourselves that we are one human race, even though these times find me credulous at the thought!

No sides to Genocide, Kaushalya Bannerji, 2024

Each poem a tear

each day a massacre

Each hour a profit

Each second a loss

I’d send this poem

To your conscience

If you had one

Fadwa Tuqan, Palestine