THE FALLEN WARRIOR OF JIHAD AND ZIONISM

by George Salamon

"To understand the Israel-Hamas war, you have to understand how we got here." —Vox, October 19, 2023

Historian Rashid Khalidi: Palestinians “Living Under Incredible Oppression, … It Had to Explode” —Democracy Now, October 9, 2023

“The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous and False.” —Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Atlantic,  October 27, 2023

His corpse lies all over town,

in all streets, all courtyards,

all rooms

drained out from his blood.

Air raid sirens yawn aloud

and roar, boom a

hollow scream

all over village or city.

A shimmer of light falls on

the corpse, bounces off his

glassy teeth and a smile

forms around his lips.

George Salamon talked years ago to a young Palestinian recently released from an Israeli prison for throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. "I just want to have a life," he said.  I wonder if he is among the fallen now. Also years ago a "revisionist" Israeli historian said "there is sympathy for both sides." All sides have failed the "Holy Land," and it is now a Bloodland.

IN SEARCH OF ALIEN CIVILISATIONS

by Martha Landman

According to a new study in The Astrophysical Journal, scientists at the University of Nottingham estimate that there is a minimum of 36 communicating intelligent alien civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. —CBS News, June 18, 2020

sitting on the veranda the other night
enjoying a hashish pipe
I got dreamy
and disappeared into the Milky Way
passing Venus and Mars
I didn’t stop this time
because they had a domestic quarrel   again
                                      palm to palm
my sky map forged me ahead      to Orion
who offered beer and cigarettes, chips and cheese
Conselice was staying the night
his nephew E.T. played with his Rubik’s Cube
                     trying to solve the Drake equation
we sat on a mega rock   Orion and I had a long chat
                                           between wake and sleep
about alien galaxies meandering around
when his laser phone detonated three loud shrills
it was Peter Backus wanting us to know
“we live in a very quiet neighbourhood”
Orion’s eyes were large      I tried to pacify him
quoting Rumi: “Love is the breath of the cosmos”
he took out his horoscope and zoomed in
                                      on other galaxies
stars were born as we looked at them
alien galaxies were signed in different languages
in front of No 23 a sign on a large wooden gate
said in Hebrew:  תישאר בחוץ לעזאזל – “stay the heck out” -
this is holy land      we assumed
         we needed an exit strategy
we weren’t going to make a covenant with hypocrisy
or with gypsies on walking sticks    their blood green
so we flowed down lava tubes through pigeon holes
                                into a glorious dystopia

Martha Landman writes in Adelaide, South Australia and has previously contributed to TheNewVerse.News.  Her chapbook Between Us was published by Ginninderra Press in November 2019.

HOMO NON SAPIENS

by George Salamon

A 2008 cartoon by Simon Farr (The Guardian)

Seventy-five years ago,
in a dive on Fifty-Second Street,
on the day Hitler's Panzers rolled into Poland
W.H. Auden lamented the end of
"a low and dishonest decade,"
with "waves of anger and fear"
rolling over the earth's "darkened lands."
And here, in the middle of another low and dishonest decade,
I sit at my computer desk in St. Louis, Missouri,
sniffing the same "unmentionable odour of death"
as Auden did, this time rising from the sandy dunes
of Iraq and the glutted bloodlands of Ukraine.
I endure the same "negation and despair,"
as blood flows instead of milk and honey
promised us by psychopathic gods we worship.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO and contributes to the Gateway Journalism Review, Jewish Currents and The New Verse News.