BURN ME, I TELL THE TRUTH

by Amy Wolf 

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

Burn me, I tell the truth.

In the hardwood floor, pine cool green painted wall calm

Of the yoga studios of Seattle

A battle rages.

Some say, “I am having my sound baths. I am going to reiki circle

I will not talk about politics . I am on a FAST from news media.

I am taking care of my mental well being.

I am not letting THAT MAN take another thing from me.”

Some, in the self-same yoga studios, aware of their skin color to the point of pain,

Say, “I am engaging in mutual aid. I am marching on Saturday. I am standing

Between my neighbors and ICE.

We all have a responsibility. First they came for the immigrants

And trans people

And I know how that poem ends so I fucking did something.”

The two sides do not meet. They do not speak. Mostly because the self-care

Sound bath socially reclusive “my mental health” crowd will not speak.

Fingers in ears, loudly chanting La la la la la at need,

They watch the ICE cars go by.

They watch their neighbors lose jobs, and hormones, security, and housing.

But they are secure in their soymilk organic mudbath facepeels and they do not despair.

“My guru tells me self-care is the very best thing I can do for the planet,

So Monday I leave for Sedona,” they say.

While Vanessa travels to the prisons to teach yoga to inmates

And Jack packs sandwiches and handwarmers to hand out to the people in tents under

the freeway

And Martha learns how to advocate for the undocumented and takes a few into her

house, her huge house, and hides them.

Amy does little but express herself to all the people who could lock her up if they so

chose,

For disparaging the regime, for insisting on rights , not just hers but other peoples.

And in the yoga studios of Seattle, the battle rages on.

Mostly in silence

Because they leave, when we tell them that the world around them is their business

And we none of us have this luxury at this time.

These are the days we spoke of, when we asked, “why didn’t the ordinary people of

Germany stop them?”

If you ever wondered what you would have done then,

Ask yourself what you are doing now, and you will have your answer.

Writers, healers, poets, musicians, humans: take care of yourself

But like the buffalo, face into the storm

Running and hiding will not protect you.

Not this time.

We will remember, when it is over, who fought

And who did not.

You might not wish to face that chill reception.

Amy Wolf is an LMT and energy worker who resides in Seattle, WA, and is studying writing.

LET THEM DRINK WATER!

by Amy Wolf

Last Thursday [December 14], on the eighth night of Hanukkah, JVP members shut down eight bridges and highways in eight cities across the U.S. to demand an end to the genocide of Palestinians. Thousands of Jews and allies protested in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and San Diego — eight cities symbolizing the eight candles lit on the final night of Hanukkah, plus the shamash, or “helper” candle. JVP members blocked traffic for hours, singing, chanting, carrying giant menorahs, and holding signs reading “Jews says ceasefire now” and “Let Gaza live.” Hundreds were arrested. —Jewish Voice For Peace

Let them drink water!

As you protest, and shut down bridges

As you congratulate each other on your solidarity 

And stop traffic

They are dying of thirst, and of dysentery,

And a dozen water-borne diseases.

The bombs are killing far fewer

Than thirst, hunger, bacteria.

Don’t look away.

Rather than chanting prayers 

With our street-borne menorahs,

Rather than snarling the evening commute,

Should we not be commandeering boats,

And airplanes 

And jeeps

And our cousins and relatives in the Knesset, 

In the State Department,

To bring water to the Gazans?

To give a cup of life to those who thirst,

The babies, the children, the adults alike?

And now food.

Do you know that over a million are starving?

That none know where their next meal is coming from?

In these circumstances, it is little more than a week 

Before that next bomb will not matter.

I am tired of marching.

I do not believe the merchants of Pike Place Market 

Control the foreign policy here

Let alone the War Cabinet of Eretz Yisrael.

Principled Jews the world over have prayed and demonstrated,

Occupied, chanted and sung.

Not a morsel of food have we been able to bring over that border,

Not a cup of water.

"Nation shall not lift sword against nation;

Neither shall they study war anymore" 

Gave me such hope, in the beginning, as my relatives sang it

In Grand Central Station, in Capitol Buildings, in the street, in Hebrew.

It's an important prayer, straight out of liturgy, out of Torah.

I grew up singing it.

Surely this would work!
Surely when the President and the Congress saw

That Jews ourselves condemned this indiscriminate massacre,

They would prevail on Israel to stop.

Catch the murderers, catch the rapists, execute them,

But leave the population alone.

Their answer, an unqualified, inelegant, "We can't."

Mixed in with a mind-bending, gas-lighting, "We are!"

Pretending to be cautious of non-combatant deaths

While leveling whole city blocks on top of the heads of babes,

In full view of the whole world.

Those blinded by the narrative say, "But the images coming out of Gaza

Are only what Hamas wants you to see. I don't believe them."

True, to the extent that the images don't show us weapons amassed in tunnels,

Soldiers in uniform plotting their next strike, or hoarding supplies,

Untrue in that those buildings are truly flattened, those babies dead,

Filmed by iPhone and uploaded by stunned and defeated citizens. 

I am tired of marching.

Where are the convoys of boats full of Americans,

Heading to the Gaza coast with water and food?

Where are the airdrops of sustenance from private planes,

Where are the means by which we might feed the starving?

In Sudan as well, in Syria, in other lesser-known conflicts,

I look at us out in the street, closing bridges and highways,

And see a feel-good exercise.

Show me one person who has changed their mind on the urgency

Or right of an issue, because they were stuck in traffic one extra hour,

While their little ones and spouse waited at home.

I'll show you two who were run over while protesting,

One dead in her twenties, the other badly hurt.

Sign me up for the convoy, the jeeps, boats, and planes

Flying an American flag, daring the Israeli army to stop us

From bringing food and water.

Oh wait. Rachel Corrie.

This experiment has been run before.

They would not hesitate to fire on us either.

They rolled a bulldozer over her young body

As she stood between it and a Palestinian house

They were intent on demolishing.

24 years old, from Olympia, Washington.

Dead in 2003.

This is why we close bridges and march against our own merchants.

Israel is too deadly a place to demonstrate.

Amy Wolf is an LMT and energy worker who resides in Seattle, WA, and is studying writing.

WHITE FLAGS, WALKING SOUTH

by Amy Wolf

I see* you, with your white flag raised on a stick, held high.

Child on your shoulder, two little legs dangling beneath your ears,

The hand not holding the white flag is grasping your son’s ankle.

A daughter walks beside you, a wife or mother follows behind, wailing.

Out of all of the Arabic I hear in the video*, I understand only Nakba,

But that is said often. Tragedy; expulsion; we won’t be going back, it says.

Your face is dirty, I think you have not had enough water to drink,  let alone to bathe

In, for a while. You look parched.

I look for your provisions; who is carrying the clothes you might change into,

The kitchen utensils, pots, pans, mattresses.

There is only you, and your youngers and elders, and one teenager

Carrying a bundle of clothes smaller than a suitcase.

He looks baffled.

I hear the words of the soldiers, hurrying you along.

They do not step into the picture to offer water, or comfort, or rest.

They are voices. I cannot impute any kindness to them,

Although you might convince me that a forced march from home

Is marginally better than having that home bombed and brought down on your head,

Doubling neatly as your tombstone and grave.

I see you, and I see my ancestors, in line to get on the trains.

With their small bundles, and cluster of relatives.

Yes, those trains.

Don’t look away.

Didn’t we say, never again?

Didn’t we say, when you pen a people in a ghetto, then make them abandon even that

For a long death march to an unknown place where there are too many bodies and not enough

Water and food

Let alone space to lay down

Didn’t we say that was genocide?

Didn’t we swear to speak up next time?

The Trail of Tears comes to mind.

Old people falling dead on the way, and children.

Women refusing to leave their young ones, and staying next to them to die in the cold.

This is not genocide porn.

I do not enjoy these pictures.

But I have met the ghosts of earlier marches.

On a cold spring morning in TN, a long-dead woman showed me

Where she killed herself with a knife to lay beside her child.

Willing to walk to Oklahoma, but not to leave her baby behind.

She said to me, “In the hall there, you are all dancing and singing and praying and setting out food for your ancestors.

Where is our food? We lived here. Feed us.”

I set out food for them, and prayer and song, and took the memory with me.

The humans walking from Gaza City to Khan Younis will be on that road for a long time,

Haunting all of those to come. Rebuking any who try to move into that space

With the same demand, dead or alive. “We live here; feed us.”

Centuries from now, should mankind survive on this planet,

You will still be able to see a line of white flags heading north to south,

Hear the sound of shuffling feet tired beyond reckoning of lifting up and setting down,

Listen to the cries of children and  the wailing of their mothers.

People like myself will be called in to do space clearings

And we will say, “I can’t tell them to leave. They live here. Just feed them.

Honor them.”

To my Jewish relatives I say this; you do not honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust

By consenting to and cheering on and excusing

A forced march

To crowded conditions

With little food

And less water.

Don’t you remember?

This is how it starts.

*The videos referenced by the speaker in this poem can be viewed here and here.

Amy Wolf is an LMT and energy worker who resides in Seattle, WA, and is studying writing.