for Gaza

1.

my eyes 

              two dead seas

witness 

              daily slaughter

—the butcher’s feast,

the reaper’s bounty—

witness 

—the healer’s gauze,

the morphine’s mercy—

              Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! 

              don’t    you know? 

Gallant says human 

animals 

do not need      when

              corralled or culled.

life does not      need life.

beyond rations 

                or rationality, 

this is the desert 

where   insurgent winds

choke   on phosphorous

               where   open 

                             mouths 

                             have 

              stitched tongues. 

2.  

so, give me your 

              list of banned words

intifada – nakba – ya’aburnee.

              i will give you a list

of the dead—olive        trees

ripped from     root, sunbirds

plucked             from sky.      i 

will lay a tatreez of   martyrs

at your feet. i will craft lianas

from              amputated limbs

so even        Death can carry 

Palestine like a germinating

seed.      i will turn my distilled 

                tears          into bullets,

i will turn my          complacency 

              into a thing thrown,

i will turn the world

upside-down, 

              until all saplings 

              are replanted    as limbs 

                             returned. 

3.  

but if    you do not cease the fires, 

do not ask         smoke for balance. 

life cannot        home in death 

                           or occupation. 

              night is meant to be filled 

              with       dark delirium

              —the dreams of children,

              the impolite 

                            hopes of ghosts—

it is not             meant 

                           to be carcass. 

thus, let us 

              invent new ways to blush. 

let us 

              make bullhorns of our 

              dusted anger

                              until we exhume 

                              new futures. 

              let us 

              be shameless.