A LESSON FROM SYRIA

by Indran Amirthanayagam

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

At some point on the road you understand
that nothing can stop you from walking ahead,
from drinking the sap of each tree, feeding
the animals and birds, loving each and every 
companion on the planet, even if some want 

to skin, burn and rape you, this is not 
their fault, the murderous rage has a cause, 
a root, and you must do what you can to plug 
the bottle from which the malicious genies
are flying out. So go ahead, vote, write

to the paper, get the school board to listen,
be active, react, take the punch and remain
standing. This may be easy to say but it is
the only way to reply to the tyrant who
will become a bully and then a coward

and will leave by the cover of darkness.
It took twenty four years for Assad, but 
those years are gone and now the chance 
to rebuild. Take it. Look ahead. You are 
alive still and able to teach, to write, to make.

Indran Amirthanayagam has just published Seer (Hanging Loose Press) and The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil). El bosque de deleites fratricidas is forthcoming from RIL Editores. He is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Mad Hat Press published his love song to Haiti: Powèt Nan Pò A (Poet of the Port). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is a collection of Indran's poems. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

WWE

by Mickey J. Corrigan

Source: iStock; Composite: Angelo Jesus Canta via America Magazine.

One man's hero:
another man's tyrant.

China wanted a wrestler
to unite the barbarians
build global power:
Qin Shi Huang
killed scholars
burned books
while slaves
built his wall,
the immigrants
castrated.

The self-declared living god:
Caligula
loved his sisters
shared them
with his men
his horse
he made a priest.

Attila the Hun:
the scourge of God
raped and pillaged.
Genghis Khan:
killed the rich
using the poor
as human shields.

Tamerlane's tower:
built from living men
cemented and bricked,
their heads
made into minarets.

Ivan the Terrible
Grand Prince of Moscow;
Robespierre beheaded,
Lenin desecrated,
Stalin had gulags.

Il Duce and the Blackshirts
Hitler and the Nazis
slave labor and torture
concentration camps for all
not in the master race.

Chairman Mao and State control:
40 million dead.
Pol Pot: professionals
sent away
to reeducation farms,
special centers for people
who wore glasses, read books.

Idi Amin. Pinochet.
Assad. Kim Jong-un.
Mugabe of Zimbabwe,
Gaddafi, al-Bashir.
Vladmir Putin and
you-know-who.
The list goes on
the reigns of corruption
gripped tight
to this day

strongmen
still

just weak men
destroying to destroy
the enemy within
creating false worlds
building bone walls
burning the truth
in public bonfires
wrenching our history
away from us
in a soul crushing
illegal, amoral
stranglehold.

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida noir with a dark humor. Her books have been released by publishers in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.  Project XX, a satirical crime novel, was released in 2017 by Salt Publishing in the UK. What I Did for Love was released by Bloodhound Books in October.

ISIL OR ISIS OR ISLAMIC STATE

by Patsy Asuncion

Image source: Aljazeera

One can be a brother only in something.

Where there is no tie that binds men,

men are not united but merely lined up.

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery 

no matter the tag, they’re Sunnis who hate  
Shiites who dominate the Iraqi state
since Hussein departed in ‘03
"helped" by US-defined democracy.

Concerns from Mid-East neighbors,
resistance a flop since US departure –
weapons seized from fleeing soldiers,
relics smashed in the promised land
oil fields reclaimed in beat-up Iran.

ISIS eyes Syria since Assad is Alawite,
a heretic because of his ties to Shiites.
Syrian Sunnis fight to oust him
with money from Saudi Arabia, Jordan,
Emirates, Egypt, even Bahrain.

Assad fights back with his mob of brothers,
Hezbollah – holy Shiite terrorists and others.
Yes, Lebanon’s faithful kill one Sunni, another.
Then Shiite Iran’s top weapons are given
for Iraq is seen as birthplace of religion.

Are you getting this straight? Do I need to conjugate?
And what’s official position of the United States?
Obama, now Trump, decries weapons of mass destruction
(seems we’ve heard this in yet another’s election).
He wants no nukes and stable oil production,

no threats to Jews or Christians with destruction
despite Republicans heating Israeli relations.
Netanyahu came to curse nuke negotiations
with Iran, much to Obama’s aggravation.
Is fight in our nation like Islamic coalitions?

Weighing terrorist bloodshed of innocents,
what can be done to prevent more incidents?
Seeing more inter-Muslim murders a day,
should we let Allah sort it out his way
as Palin retorted, and stay out of the fray?


Patsy Asuncion’s 2016 debut poetry collection Cut on the Bias depicts her world from the slant of a bi-racial child raised by an immigrant father and WWII vet. Indiana University’s Spirit this spring, The New York Times, Prevention Magazine, vox poetica, Cutthroat Journal, Snapdragon, Loyola’s The Truth About the Fact, Reckless Writing and others feature Patsy’s writings. The only local female emcee, Patsy promotes diversity through her open mic (6900+ YouTube views) and local initiatives, e.g., Women of Color, International Mother Language Day and International Women’s Day events.

ALEPPO

by George Salamon





Wretched Aleppo,
Bereaved by death
Who grants no audience
To human flesh
As humanity prepares
Another feast for death.
After Auschwitz it  was said
"No more poetry."
After Aleppo, I say
More poetry to instill
Reverence for flesh
Sacrificed for evil vapors and whims.

George Salamon grew up in Europe during the slaughter of World War Two and now, from his home in St. Louis MO, reads about and looks at pictures from man's latest crimes against humanity in Aleppo.

IF THIS IS MY LAST MESSAGE

by Freesia McKee 

To see Ismail Alabdullah's heartbreaking video tweet, go to https://twitter.com/SyriaCivilDef/status/808834482610589697

for Aleppo

if danger crescendos
like a heating tea kettle

jaw of a broken jar
open as the mouth of the moon

if I die
still young

remember that I died
as people have always
died

as you lie

listening

do not remember me for
this last message

remember the song I sang

if you sleep through
what we lived for as it burns

think about my smoke
how when it touched your skin

you turned away

Freesia McKee is a working poet. Her words have appeared in the Huffington Post, Gertrude, Painted Bride Quarterly, Burdock, and Sundress Press's Political Punch anthology. She co-hosts The Subtle Forces, a weekly morning show on Riverwest Radio in Milwaukee.

ALEPPO

by Peleg Held


Source: Twitter, 5:59 AM, December 13, 2016

There is a city.
It is not our city.
Its broken buildings are full of bodies.
They are not our bodies.
In that city syllables are run through and strung
together into long cords of rough names
that, if they were washed clean and laid
end to end, would reach right to our doorstep.
But our names are not rough names like these.

Someone, somewhere behind the wall, is banging on a pipe.
Or are they screaming for help?
We cannot say for sure.
If indeed, there are still words coming
from any body in those broken buildings
they are strange words, not our words
yet.

Source: Twitter, 7:11 AM, December 13, 2016

Peleg Held lives in Portland, Maine with his partner and his dog Emitt. There is also the semi-feral cat, Smudge. And a kid or two. pelegheld(at)gmail.com.

HELLO, ALEPPO

by Siham Karami

France has announced it will ask the international criminal court to investigate possible war crimes committed in Syria's Aleppo. Rebel-held eastern Aleppo city, besieged since early September, has been the focus of an intense aerial bombardment campaign by Russian and Syrian fighter jets. For their part, anti-government fighters are trying to break the siege and connect with other rebel-held territories to the west of Aleppo, Syria's second city. "We do not agree with what Russia is doing, bombarding Aleppo. France is committed as never before to saving the population of Aleppo," Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French foreign minister, told France's Inter radio on Monday. —Al Jazeera, October 11, 2016. Image source: Reuters via Al Jazeera.

Aleppo wakes to brute victory nonsense,
another corpse called dawn, pale scar of incense.

This week this family had but stones to eat,
and played with rubble. For Syria? Bashar's two cents.

Put a plan in place. They'll kill food convoys.
Outlaw love. Throw feathers, tar on sense.

Dear Russia, count the children killed for one stuffed scarecrow.
What could your heart, dead now, live for or sense?

They wash up on the shores of everywhere
in waves of family—keep out!!—each pair of eyes, ignored, dissents.

Rag-tag fighters with their cobbled guns
blew the superpower's mind to lower sense.

A father plants impossible red roses, hears bombers
play Beethoven overhead: a brief soaring sense.

I shoot this arrow to the deaf-mute smoke
rising from the shattered core of innocence.

Siham Karami lives in what was the path of Hurricane Matthew, and survived. Recent work can be found in such places as Measure, The Comstock Review, Sukoon Magazine, Mezzo Cammin, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Rotary Dial, Right Hand Pointing, Angle Poetry, Think, and the Ghazal Page. 

THE BOMBING OF ALEPPO

by Cally Conan-Davies

Clashes around Syria's second city Aleppo have killed at least 16 pro-government fighters and 19 members of al-Qaeda's affiliate and allied rebel groups, according to the Syrian Oservatory for Human Rights. Inside Aleppo, the Observatory said barrel bomb strikes by government forces on Sunday hit the northeastern neighbourhood of Al-Haidariyah, injuring a number of people including children. —Middle East Eye, April 11, 2016

For ten minutes every hour, a light shines on
this gorgeous Ardabil carpet covering the floor.
Seated near it, waiting for my spell of illumination,
I close my eyes and dream of flying
on a rug ‘of singular perfection . . .
logically and consistently beautiful’ as William Morris saw it.
Before I was timewise, as a child, beautiful
Persian carpets existed wholly to transport me,
who believed that things behave on purpose
to pick us up and set us safely down in far off places,
the perfumed journey made in the blink of an eye
because weren’t we riding carpets, on which we sat
with our legs crossed, listening, rapt,
to tales of lamps and princes, thieves and flying carpets.
Nothing could unseat the singular perfection
of our balance in the wind, we didn’t even have to hold on—

the light comes on, I blink, now Assad’s forces carpet bomb
Aleppo, and here are children ravished by the carpets,
intensifying beauty at the knotted borders, and here
the weavers who warped it, and here a storied museum
where an old carpet on the floor is logical
as dust, and near at hand, and difficult to reach.


Cally Conan-Davies is a writer who lives by the sea.

THE DESTRUCTION OF ANYWHERE

by David Feela

The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold
And released lethal doses of chemical gold;
And the corpses in white shrouds could not testify
When Assad shook his fist: all the dissidents lie.

So Death spread its wings without making a sound,
no staccato of gunfire, no bombs shook the ground.
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill
And their bodies convulsed before growing quite still.

No gashes or wounds, no bloody revolution;
They died to save bullets, a thrifty solution.
And the UN, they came, took the samples away
To be tested in labs before bodies decay.

And the streets of Damascus are quiet tonight,
And the militants home while they wait for first light;
And how sad the last volley of lies to be hurled
Has melted like snow in the glance of the world.


David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book, The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. His new book of essays, How Delicate These Arches  , released through Raven's Eye Press, has been chosen as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.