We've Already Seen the Burning

we've already seen the burning monks and children alive,

we've already seen destroyed cities all of our lives,

body bags homeward bound, politicians always compromised.

snipers in the windows on newark ave, next to buildings burning, 

killers of all stars and stripes, flags, and insignias, corporate towers tumbling to the ground

read the history books of the razing of greenwood, slavery, apartheid, occupations, and torture chambers abound

who would think we'd still be surprised. Aghast at our own stupidity.

old civilizations praised in history books, 

ideas of democracy and freedom compromised,

what was then is not now, hope has always gone unrealized.

we already saw all the pictures, videos, film,  

already read and heard the excuses, the constitutions reasonings, a government no longer believing in anything.

we don't need any more proof of their mutually assured destruction, their fully loaded hypocrisy, 

not far enough into the future can we see, to be sure, with certainty, what can be said with surety, tomorrow is not the end nor is it the first day of the rest of your life.

we're all born into this life of strife the same as a squirming rat,

we should be thankful we've not been branded with a corporate logo yet,

before we know it, we've got pubic hair, breasts and years by gone bye,

between us and them, there's a wide countryside of sweat, blood, and tears.

we're expected to take up the gun in their defense, produce broken dreams for their tears and give our babies to protect us from future fears.

on the refuse heavy edge of the blue, grey sour mediterranean,

ancient sea of civilizations born and died, waves slap the sandy shore, polluted by the futures stillborn roar, 

rise and fall, upon broken walls and scattered fragments,

lay the remnants of old palestine,

further away, boats of refugees, migrations wrought from hopeless salvation out of Libya, greece, thrace and persia,

where deciduous rhymes of homer and ovid still reverb amongst the dunes

filled the brim of human cargo, fake gods wandering with homesick tenderness,

a nightmare for the ages.

not long gone, yet always gone, defined as irrelevant.

erase the nakba, deny the occupations, 

there's a palestinian woman always standing on a landscape of rubble, being tearfully poetic about nightmares she has, her children gone, her family disappeared

she wasn't there on October 7th

are these just dreams she'll never awake from; all will all be as she remembers it.

nakba, sanctions, punishment, from which another army is born

from Gettysburg, wounded knee, hiroshima, to dresden, auschwitz, nakba, occupation, war, rwanda, gangland civil wars, sanctions against the innocent,

where would we be without these men who persist in sting like mad bees, far from their nest, the honey secure, but,

 there's always the threat, more in their poisoned mind than from us.

nothing i write nor speak today say what needs to to be said

it's all outrage, words cannot be felt, no heal nor sway.

words forbidden, restrained by bad faith reason nor able to flow like a wild river ribboned to a sea of dreams

they are useless, like their words. they are incantations, rituals, like their words. they do not soothe savage beasts.

the apocalypse came to a small israeli town,

then went on to savage a world in the name of revenge.

the day of the apocalypse came and went, came and went.

the apocalypse came to a ukranian town, stayed around, what goes around, has not gone away since.

these self-proclaimed geniuses who run the world by their moral absence, 

take their turns as their moment arrives, peace on a platter, 

like the head of john the baptist,

to play the warning bells, many will suffer as they have forever

oh, if only those bright boys would turn the guns upon themselves,

we praise the dawning of a new day,

instead, we allow them taking us to the edge of the vulture's land, the promised broken land

those who cannot walk away, be carried or have to stay,

They will be left to only pray, "never again" they will say,

too late, too late, more hate is already on the way.

we've already seen it before.

Sent from my iPad