POEMS FOR GAZA
Here are a handful of poems for Gaza.
The first was written in 1982 at the time of the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
The second and third, written early in the genocidal assault, should not be possible to write – these are not a child’s things to do. Today these two poems serve to mark how much more blood drippingly gruesome we have allowed things to become: I just watched a clip of a child, maybe 10, crying and screaming, standing in front of a tent, pointing, watching his father burn. Genocide is live streamed and our nation blocks its eyes and ears and says nothing.
The fourth claims the Palestinian flag as a global flag at the forefront of the emancipation of us all.
The last is for Aaron Bushnell.
howard
Peace for Galilee
Do you see the small streaks
of white
those are the F-16s
do you see the rainbow fountains
of dust
those are the bombs
do you see this child
of four months
do you see her phosphorus melt
blood red raw trunk
those are the dead
Was he her father
and if he were
could he bear to hold her thus
if he were not
would he dare
she’s the age of my daughter
not yet seven
her body now blackened
flaked and charred
he holds her
shows a martyr for you to see
do you look in his eyes
they will make revolution
for ten thousand years!
It will be a crime now
to meet with the PLO
one who did is degraded in public
he should have paid a whore
it will be against the law
a crime to meet with a people
who do not exist
because they are terrorist
those who exist
go alone
in F-16s
cynic
it was a ghetto bombed
howard engelskirchen/1982
Gaza White Flag
a small girl
5 or 6 years old
wearing a child’s blue backpack
and a pink sort of jogging suit
walks unbowed
with hundreds of others
along a rubbled road
most with hands up
or some like her
beside her smaller brother
arm lifted
raising a small white flag
howard engelskirchen 2023
Today Again I Cried
today again I cried
it was a simple image
a child, a small girl
knelt to pull a winding sheet
over her brother
through her tears
consoling another brother
bent to hug him
sobbing, “he’s a martyr”
“he’s gone to our father”
a father already lost to them
howard engelskirchen 2023
Everywhere Someone
“[a]ll human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights…without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status” UN Declaration of Human Rights
Everywhere someone
with many of their next door
neighbors or friends
waves a Palestinian flag
become a global flag
proclaiming dignity of every kind
without distinction of any kind
“We Demand Equality
From River to Sea”
Palestine will be free
Earth will be free
from ocean to ocean
across hemispheres
and mountains
a free world for all
free our embrace
our celebration
of each
one another
kin
of every kind
howard engelskirchen 2023
On October 17, 2023, in Berlin, police confiscated a cardboard poster from a Jewish Israeli woman with this sentence “From the River to the Sea, We Demand Equality.”
BURNS
for Aaron Bushnell
Burns, the worst pain
hell’s image
sent in our name
we did not stop
rekindling insensate
the colonial normal
of our coming to be
complicit
indurate
will you ignore screams
now our own
bodies trembling
skin peeling
howard engelskirchen 2024