Waking up one day not knowing if I’ll see another Praying to God so he can protect my father and mother We haven’t had enough food to eat since July I wanted to act grown and so I try not to cry I ask myself why this was always happening They say they are killing
Child through war What do you see? Pomegranates, figs, and an olive tree Child through war What do you see? Smoke, steel, and concrete on me Child through war What do you see? Family and friends weeping, crying for me Child through war What do you see? Dark clouds looming, above brown trees Child through
The earth has a heartbeat that bleeds tears In time with a little child’s fear. The holies dare not rest complacent in the belief That humankind will love their neighbors as themselves. The wars and rumours have split open the doors And something much more malicious has entered in. Something stirred the dust and the
NEVER AGAIN! AND YET AGAIN? (for the Holocaust being commited in Palestine by Israel!) Remember you said never again! But here it is again. Remember you said “We will never forget” but here it is again. You said “Genocide is a crime” but here is the crime again. So your words were false then? or
(Farasha means “butterfly” in Arabic) Tears pour as we Toss and turn Sleep is futile as They pillage and burn Complacency is useless We must rise for the oppressed Firstly in night prayers Begging for wrongs to be addressed Then we use any means At our disposal Boycott, divest, sanction Is our proposal Yearning to
Cease your fire For I am only a child who wishes to admire, Admire the waves as they crash on the shore, Admire the laughter, the music, the joy we had before I wish to chase kites, not run from the sound To see homes standing, not torn to the ground And to sit by
In bitter times stones cut your feet And the winds of change stood still. When all the voices and all the wars were scratched into your heart, And marked into your soul. I watched and waited for you. In the cruel and relentless call to arms The mothers and the children hid Crouched and beaten
I sit at my machine, the early morning news still ringing in my ears. An earnest voice acknowledges the land our fathers took. Now some attempts are made at reparations and apologies. That’s good, I think, long overdue. Then images of war, of starving children, a wasteland, fills the screen. I hear the cries of
Where do the doves go when the bombs fall? Into the grit and grey of skies And swift to the mountains and the valley of tears. Where do the mothers and children hide When the screech of sirens burn bitter the night And nowhere now, not a single light of hope illuminates the Gaza sky.
When my father was seventy-four and I was no longer a girl that cowered, skirting the edge of the room, I asked him to travel back to his childhood, the landscape he’d banished for years. He became an Amish boy in suspenders, hitching the horse to the buggy, driving Delaware’s back country roads past the
