Palestine: The Poem

Hello lovelies! 

So this post is quite different. I'm gonna be sharing my poem titled: 'Palestine'. Now if any of you don't know, last year there were huge, violent clashes between Israel and Palestine. This tension has been going on for decades but last year I was old enough to actually understand what was really going on. And it hit me. Hard. I would watch grandmothers collapse in tears at the loss of their entire families, children being orphaned in the blink of an eye, babies being carried by two people, because one had to carry their ripped apart legs and the other their separated torso.

That was the birth of this poem, I started writing it around August of last year. I am not Palestinian, but I wrote this from the point of view of one. I just was really hurt by what I saw during the 2014 conflicts.

I want to say a quick "thank you" to Stanley K. for helping me edit this.

Here it is:

Palestine

Saher Amin

The body parts of what was once my family

lie in my arms.

Five generations tortured.

Allah, send Angel Israel to guard the souls

of those who have fallen,

let them know that they are still living

and let the living hear the anthem of

a burning land.

An alamis taslam

La tas taslim*

You can shoot, push, blood, stab me

I will not fall.

You can rape, bomb, break me

I will not fall.

Battle, shackle, lie, sweatshop me

refugee, waterboard, oppress me

you will try to crack my rib, shatter my heart,

hunch my back, and dullen my eyes

but the bending of my knees belongs to my Lord.

Allah, light a fire inside of my heart

for the days when you did not ignite the sun.

When mother was ripped from child,

When nail was ripped from bloody raised palms,

When sixty year old hands were bejewelled

with beads of sweat

and gems of blood

and rings of oil lamps.

When the last Gaza rose

has been stripped of her colour.

When I am left reaching out

to the final mirage of a broken land,

I will not fall,

I can not fall.

There will be a day when we can eat together,

When we will make home in abandoned tanks.

Peace is stilled fallen bullet shells.

We will drink from cups made of old grenades.

When music is made from halted shrapnel

and silence is not the dancing embers of explosions past.

There will be a time when the walls sit with us

and not between us.

----

*I will not give up

Do not give up (Arabic)

Let's save each other. We're all we have.