Poem for Palestine
The Death Angel hasn’t made an appearance in the marketplace/
or Samarra/ or Ramallah/ or East Jerusalem or West Bank/ certainly not in Gaza/ since Nakba/the IOF seem to take up too much space/ stingers, scythes, and snipers/ ax throwing death dates/ appointments/ now that so many are dead/ the angels must make trips/ they’ve tried to build a kingdom/ above God’s.// The power one must have to turn resting places into kill zones// Growing up, i liked my mud pies and my dirt dinners/ my inflatable summer pool and my landlord’s black and red Harley Davidson ride/ Hannah Montana cds and Happy Meals/ the small things that helped me find alright/ as if alright is something to be found/ because at night /(people like) My elderly neighbor used to heave and holler/ that her family had died/ murdered/ all in a month’s time/ but the lots of families executed in full in Palestine/ extinguished by falling ordinance in one swooping try/ is unrightable// Growing up, I liked my metal detector and the brown eyed boy named Zion/ like Lauryn Hill’s Zion/ not Biden’s zion/ definitely not 1948’s zion/ he’d bike over to me from the projects nearby/ listen to me ramble random facts of science/ and to avoid falling in love, I’d/ focus on the various shell casings and condoms and coins/ but never sleeping missiles/ or scattered flesh parts of childrens’ humanity/ but I did used to be haunted by the incessant helicopter buzz/ as metal birds at low hover circled the same 6, 8, 12 houses/ night after night/ searching for someone/ those awful anterior lights beaming down/ penetrating our blacked out blinds/ bright enough to cause temporary blindness while simultaneously/ exhuming buried hood secrets/ it would go on for hours, you could find live coverage on the radio/ all because they can/ but the kind of sleep lost to the sound of metal birds over way, searching/ for undemolished neighborhoods/ to plunder and annihilate/ none of us should be sleep/ with that/ none of us should find alright// Growing up, I loved seeing the regular hustle man/ pop open the trunk of his hooptie and sell us bootleg movies/ like Boyz in the Hood, Paid in Full and Belly/ headphones and cd players and bootleg cds to accompany/ plus my mom’s regular grumble ‘here we go again’/ but in the early 2000’s you can’t knock the way independent men hit the block/ for a buck/ and in those times LLc’s were for those who could/ those with the scoop, trade knows, about the innermost-inside/ but I shuddered/ at the cops who would case our homes/ day and night/ only to return, on go-time/ shoot the yapping yard dogs, make entry to discover and seize drugs with no warrant then/ do them/ but more often “discover” teen aged boys/ drag them out into the cover of night/ yank off their shoes, break batons on the bottoms of their feet/ beloved black boys defeated/ beloved brown boys demeaned/ beloved car-lot dogs dead/ beloved neighborhood dogs whimpering into deaf ears and cracked cement/ bodies broken and in half/ by pellet guns/ hours for animal control to collect/ weeks to wash away the blood/ but mothers and fathers in Gaza are dragged out in the cover of night/ beat, assaulted/ forced to strip bare, remove their modesty/ like it’s a topical ointment/ as if it’s not also a value from within/ made undignified and indecent/ on display in front of the masses by noon next day/ no need to imagine because it’s happening/ burned into the retinas of everyone/ America and the IOF eat the same diet ; violence.// Growing up, I thought I’d like the idea of adoption/ but we built a family out of the crisis of another/ I-/ We-/ were so so very very wrong/ It took 7 months/ for babygirl to trust my hug/ we tried to give her a new name/ when we tried to forget who she belonged too/ she slept in my arms but never slept good/ Gazan mothers cannot be replaced/ white women would do good to learn that/ *because/ white women and their compulsion to thieve*/ I think about newborns and NICU babies/ suffocating, starving, being moved around like chess pieces/ My mother made it to 36 weeks with me/ she birthed me alone/ likely denied medication or epidurals/ because of her drug possession history/ she birthed me alone ; high on cocaine/ I came into this world bugged out/ my withdrawal so intense I cried and cried/ jittery and irritable/ each day I vomited 4 to 6 times/ no shocker- a lifetime of insomnia/ on day 5, I was placed in my second home/ Till this day/ the therapies I need are extensive/ I worry for the babies of Palestine/ especially the grown ones// I know military grade tanks/ that prowl/ North Oakland/ Ice City and West Oakland/GhostTown and be in the East with it/ driving down main thoroughbreds/ acting thoroughbred/ OPD infiltration/ really their obsession/ with 6-5 vill and 6-9 vill, 70s and the deepest east of Oakland/ I know about the military base in Pleasanton/ and ain’t nothing pleasant about it/ *for my kind of people*/ off duty servicemen/ who drive around/ sniping/ black pedestrians/ on afternoon strolls/ with rubber bullets and rock salts/ we weren’t born yesterday/ try 500 years or so/ we got the warning/ I’ve watched how businesses board up doors and windows and shop owners disappear before protests/ like for Oscar Grant and Treyvon Martin/ but in Gaza neighbors help neighbors help neighbors help each other// Growing up, my mother didn’t like me asking questions/ it became easier to say not all cops are bad altogether/ instead of investigating/ and implicating/ the incredibly, irrevocably carceral system we live in/ calling us into action/ until cops would scream and berate us/ on their war rigs’ big speaker/ in front of the whole town/ just to issue a ticket for a broken tail light or late registration/ the lights and sirens were enough/ all what?/ Because they can.// In the videos/ aside from fleshy gore/ I notice homes in a million more pieces than they started from on building day/ it feels weird/ wrong/ to call the streets colorful/ vibrant/ when they’ve become a bright bleak mess/ of violated dreams/ but the clothes and rugs and toys/ the love barriers/ between family members and neighbors’ living quarters/ now one big slaughter pile/ and at the bottom/ are the neighbors/ below them/ your family members// In my mind/ I have the memory/ of a million pieces pieces of this festival/ gone bloody/ i actually remember the vibrancy/ the color/ that became a bright bleak mess/ of violated fun/ when a white man/ on bike that went vroom vroom/ bore double digit rounds into the crowd of black folks/ ending the day in one big slaughter pile/ at the top/ protective neighbors/ at the bottom/ scared neighbors/ below them/ the shot/ the dead/ a sight for sore eyes/ and I mean this quite literally/ because before that in my mind/ I see men in their proper colors/ on street code/ drag themselves home/ nerves in the lower half/ fried/ from bullets/ that blew them open/ drag their own dead weight/ still on business/ until they die/ I see my men with bright futures/ colorful personalities/ double tapped execution style// In 4k, I see the gonned children of Gaza/ they fill my mind and I want to turn my internal tv back to black and white/ but for them, I will draw a new world and color it beautiful// I admit, I’ve done more pencil tapping than writing/ finger tapping while driving/ I protest/ but I still do more heel shaking than marching/ I write letters, they’re direct and demanding/ but my poems are visceral and implicating/ I shall hunt Israhell down in my poems/ I will work to free Palestinian journalists, their poets, their storytellers/ because your checkpoints, your zip ties/ will not outlive my rhymes/ with the martyr’s names piling up in your ears/ I pray you have canal infections for life.