SOME OF THEM ARE BRAVE

by Lynn White

Medical workers in Israel have told the BBC that Palestinian detainees from Gaza are routinely kept shackled to hospital beds, blindfolded, sometimes naked, and forced to wear nappies – a practice one medic said amounted to “torture”. —BBC, May 21, 2024

Everyone knew it was happening
the unheard story
the tens of thousands dead,
the millions displaced,
the decades of rubble,
the destroyed schools.
hospitals, universities
everyone knew.

Everyone knew it was happening
the unheard story
even though the journalists were dead
or expelled and banned
everyone knew.

Everyone knew it was happening
the unheard story
of the hundreds
or thousands,
or tens of thousands
who had disappeared
uncharged with any crime
or misdemeanour
everyone knew.

Then three Israeli workers
blew their whistles loud
and everyone heard
what everyone knew.

Now the trick is to listen.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes.

A HELL OF OUR OWN

by George Salamon

AMMAN, Jordan — Islamic State militants have seized most of a sprawling Palestinian refugee district in the southern part of the Syrian capital, Damascus, an area that has been under siege and bombardment for nearly two years already, according to Palestinian and United Nations officials and residents. The officials called for quick action by international organizations, the Syrian government and all armed groups to head off an unfolding catastrophe. Reports of killings and even beheadings were beginning to circulate on Saturday, worsening what is already a longstanding humanitarian nightmare for the 18,000 residents of the Yarmouk refugee camp. —NY Times, April 4, 2015; Photo: Residents of the besieged Palestinian camp of Yarmouk line up for supplies in 2014. Most of the camp has been seized by ISIS, who are fighting a Palestinian group inside the camp. (UNRWA/Associated Press)

                                                           

What is their hell, the eternity we've made their own?
Hunger, fear, murder and death,
the destruction of the spirit.
It is the human will
creates their hell, where human cruelty
burns brightly.

For millions life on earth is
an eternal accident, smoke and mist,
misfortune and despair.
A place where every hope must vanish
and darkness must fall.

Poetry, we are told, is meant to see
the truth of what is, not seek
what is the truth.
It is not honey
for the poet's tongue.


George Salamon taught German at several colleges, served as staff reporter on  the St. Louis Business Journal and Sr. Editor for Defense Systems Review. He contributes regularly to the Gateway Journalism Review, Jewish Currents and The New Verse News.

EPISTLE TO THE DISPLACED

by Martin Willitts Jr

“On December 1st, the World Food Programme (W.F.P.), announced that it was suspending its operations to feed one million seven hundred thousand Syrian refugees—scattered across Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt—because it had run out of money. (The program is under the auspices of the U.N., but funded entirely by voluntary donations.) . . . As vast as the crisis in Syria is, it’s only one of several across the globe. In Iraq, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic, huge numbers of refugees are on the move; in West Africa, there is the outbreak of Ebola. Apart from watching all this, what can you do? You can send money. I’ve seen the work of both the World Food Programme and the I.R.C. up close, and I can tell you that both make a difference.” --Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker, December 12, 2014. PHOTEO: Syrian Kurdish refugees enter Turkey, September 27, 2014. CREDIT PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL CHRISTOPHER BROWN/MAGNUM via The New Yorker.

Peace to you in a place where there is no peace,
where grace has no meaning, and you hide
from the violence where there is no shelter.
Where you are is so dangerous, so uncertain,
there is no guarantee this message will reach you
or ease your fears. And I fear, you have died
or lay dying under ruins, wondering
where salvation is, where peace is promised,
and have you the grace necessary to go there.

Where I am, in safe for the moment, but
as we both know, not one moment is certain
or safe, and all my security could be gone,
wiped out in an instance, and my light taken.
So as grace leaves me in search of you,
you shall be making a different peace,
one before death, wiping the slate clean,
professing your faults, as the pieces of life
disassemble around you, lacking grace.


Martin Willitts Jr has 7 full-length collections and 28 chapbooks including his recent social issues poetry chapbook City Of Tents about the Occupy Movement and other historical and political poems (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2014).