photography ‘Mural on Israeli wall’ by Justin McIntosh
This poem is a call for sadness and despair to clamour their own call, in the face of anguish with the genocide being perpetrated in Palestine, and the media collusion with the perpetrators and those who arm them, to bring in the dreamers, the creators, to heal and feed the ground, to create a greater WE.
What are you telling me, sadness?---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *Material should not be published in another periodical before at least one year has elapsed since publication in Whispering Dialogue. *أن لا يكون النص قد تم نشره في أي صحيفة أو موقع أليكتروني على الأقل (لمدة سنة) من تاريخ النشر. *All content © 2021 Whispering Dialogue or respective authors and publishers, and may not be used elsewhere without written permission. جميع الحقوق محفوظة للناشر الرسمي لدورية (هَمْس الحِوار) Whispering Dialogue ولا يجوز إعادة النشر في أيّة دورية أخرى دون أخذ الإذن من الناشر مع الشكر الجزيل
What are you telling me, despair?
They are killing the children
the great separation of hatred
has turned hearts into stones
Whole peoples cry
inconsolable…
There is no hope
for a very long time
when the children are killed
Nobody understands anything
no ‘because’ offers to explain
they are killing the future, sadness
and whole peoples are crying blood
The brutalised beings with stone hearts
press buttons
that birth lethal eggs
from their impassive bellies
The brutalised beings with stone hearts
and strangulating signatures
cut off the thread from which hung
thousands of lives, young and old
hidden from view
Behind the newspapers’ ink, and bytes
behind the carefully woven
forked tongues of television
chains
chains that strap
the wings of free thinking
the social sociopathic media
algorithms pre-packed with lies
carefully cooked to poison
and trigger the worst in humanity
smearing the brain cells
with tar and other rubbish
that blocks the entry
of leaping truths
that block the breathing
of good intentions…
What are you telling me, sadness?
What are you telling me despair?
Bring in the dreamers
the people are desperate
they-we have lost all hope
they-we have been bathed
in blood and anguish
their-our pain is so intense
they-we have become it
No one has come
to collect the tears to be the tears with them-us
Soaked in a crystallised lake
of salt water
an ocean of briny grief
Their-our whole beings are
meshed into a damp compost
that only mutual aid and creation
can use to make it all life-full
otherwise fertile ground for
all manner of life-stealing hates
Sadness and despair have spoken:
“Bring in the dreamers
the healers and the architect builders
the ones that know about
building bridges on the edge of a sword
bring in the daring creators
the ones that walk the rope as they unwind it
bring in the sculptors
the musicians and the poets
the cooks and the brickmakers
the wholesome to feed the ground
to feed the children
to build the greater WE”
Let us put the call out
bring them-us all in!
Stop the killing!
Alto al fuego!
