Land Back Rivers flowingScreens overflowingwith deathA keyboard of rubbleTechnology’s offeringRetina-burned imagesSeared into our conscience Violence reveredDialogue destroyedLives snapped into piecesDeath’s drones and sirensThe soundtrack of these days This is the world we witnessAs we bow and breakBeneath the onslaughtBut return we doOver and over and over againTo the olive grove’s heart.
Category: Social Justice
To Wake Up Human!
Antonio Gramsci would have aptly described our times, smug and blood-thirsty as the “time of monsters”. Unbelievably, it’s been 173 days of military onslaught that has brought calamity and massacres to the Gaza Strip. The suffering seems endless. Having seen the testimonies of so many children and youth, the murders, the detritus of bombardment, it’s…
Rafah: A Dirge for Democracy
I was and was not Surprised To see and hear of the torment of Rafah. I have watched the screens light up White and orange as phosphorus and fire. I have seen the 75 years and 128 days of pulverized buildings, Broken bodies, parts of bodies, dead children, Broken healers, silenced storytellers, massacred mothers. Hind,…
Return to the Same Moon
We enter the new year full of desires for a new and different world, a truly human world that honours our interconnectedness and “right relations” as Indigenous teachings put it. In this world, genocide would not exist because the power and powerlessness engendered by relations of exploitation, oppression, empire-building would not be the filters through which all…
Poetry for the Peeps! Sharing Spirit, Sharing Solidarity
Today’s post shares the amazing resilience of the Palestinian people and their supporters around the world. . Although I sometimes find myself turning away from the incessant slaughter by the Israeli and U.S. governments I remember that it is a privilege to do so and I turn back to the brave young journalists who bring…
Poetry for the Peeps! Poems For Humanity
This week, before the celebration of the birth of Christ in Beit Layem in a week’s time, Israeli leaders and their U.S. handlers continue their vicious bombardment and genocide of Gaza and its people. It is with a heavy heart that we witness no mercy. From occupation to apartheid to genocide, settler colonialism seems to follow the…
Poets and Artists Against Occupation
Again I share the words and art of Palestinians. In this upside down world where to call an end to slaughter is to be silenced! More eloquently than I, the poets and visual artists I have been sharing, lay out the daily costs of expulsion, occupation and hope for liberation. “Don’t stop talking about Palestine”,…
International day of solidarity with the People of Palestine!
Today is the international day for solidarity with the Palestinian people, These are a people who have experienced expulsion and ethnic cleansing for 75 years now. They have been living in what even former U.S. president Jimmy Carter called an “apartheid state”. Diasporic Palestinians are in many countries across the globe and provide cheaper labour…
Poetry for the Peeps!
We are seeing the rise of the new era of capitalism in its decadence, that is, decline. The thrashing tail and head are swinging all of us on this globe from side to side, twisting reality, employing doublespeak, and criminalizing compassion. In the midst of this slaughter of civilians and children, with over 12000 dead…
Poetry for the Peeps! Poets of Palestine and Elsewhere
I am speechless at what I have been witnessing. The haves and have-nots are no longer about accumulation of capita alone but, as in the times of slavery and conquest, about having humanity and being seen as human. In the face of such violence and dispossession, this poetry cries with her voice to be heard…
Poetry for the Peeps! Mahmoud Darwish
I’ve been aghast at the news of what is amounting to ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the repetition of the Catastrophe of 1948. I am saddened and enraged by the absence of a real international outcry. We truly live in a inhumane world. Some antidote to the despair I have been feeling is found in…
Poetry for the Peeps! Silvio Rodriguez on Chile
This September 11 2023 marks 50 years since the terrible coup in Chile, replacing democratically elected progressive President Salvador Allende with CIA and ITT backed dictator General Pinochet. Assassinating Allende and torturing and killing hundreds and hundreds of other local activists, artists and social organizers, the new military government brought in the first Neo-liberal experiment…
Poetry for the Peeps! More Dalton!
Some more Roque Dalton for us to enjoy. I have shared his work in a previous post with a small biography from Wikipedia. His poetry was very important for Latin American writing and for revolutionary cultural producers from all over the world. His time was cut short by an assassination by his ex-comrades and El…
Poetry for the Peeps! Roque Dalton
It’s a hot September day. Unseasonably so. Weather extremes are being felt more and more frequently, affecting millions and millions around the globe. Stewardship of the land and waters that sustain us has fallen by the wayside. Hunger is a global disgrace. And even poets– not economists or think- tanks, were able to pin-point the…
Nonsense Verse for this Metaverse!
I’ve been under the weather and tried reading some silly stuff to cheer myself up! Here I share Lewis Carroll’s poem, one of so many worthy of both nonsense and great sense! Little Birds is from Sylvie and Bruno, a rather peculiar and rambling story, but dotted with some good poems! Enjoy… Little Birds are…
Ear to the Ground 