poetry

Friday Haiku

/ Tracy Abell / 1 Comment

look closely
who-who do you see
one great horned owl

Bear Creek Greenbelt Park. February 28, 2025

Thank you, Amy Law, for showing me the owl nest. While we didn’t see American Dippers, it was still a lovely walk and talk.

Friday Haiku + notes: on Nazism

/ Tracy Abell / 9 Comments

new administration
billionaire’s Nazi salute
believe what you see

NOTES:
1) The above shows Elon Musk at Trump’s inaugural parade on January 20, 2025. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP)
2) The American Defamation League (ADL) which supposedly exists to combat antisemitism, responded to Musk’s Nazi salute with this [emphasis mine]:
“This is a delicate moment. It’s a new day and yet so many are on edge. Our politics are inflamed, and social media only adds to the anxiety,” the ADL wrote in a Monday post on Musk’s social platform X. “It seems that @elonmusk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appreciate that people are on edge.”
In case you’ve forgotten, last year the ADL decried the “antisemitism” of college students (many of them Jewish) who protested their tuition and taxes being used to fund the genocide in Palestine. Notably, the ADL url for their “Campus Crisis Daily” contains the words “no tolerance for antisemitism.”  Apparently, ADL can tolerate Nazi salutes from white supremacist billionaires, but draws the line at Jewish students speaking out against genocide.
3) It’s not only the ADL tripping over themselves to excuse a Nazi salute, a TV weather forecaster from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was fired after calling out Musk’s Nazi salute on social media.
4)  NBC News edited their footage to remove the Nazi salute while the Washington Post referred to Musk’s appearance as “exuberant.”
5) Religion Dispatches breaks down the media coverage in the U.S. and around the world: While Global Media Are Clear on Musk’s Nazi Salute US Media Engage in ‘Nazi-Washing’ 
6) This is a very good time to remember George Orwell’s book 1984:

For above graphic: h/t to @thelazycanuck.bsky.social

Take them at their words and actions. Believe what you see. Reject the gaslighting.

Climate Movement Monday: mutual aid

/ Tracy Abell / 12 Comments

Welcome back to Movement Mondays in which we discuss all things climate. And guess what? Climate is connected to every other issue we’re facing for the simple reason that everyone and everything on this planet is connected. No one and nothing exists in isolation.

As I write this, much of the western U.S. is under a heatdome while Hurricane Beryl continues to wreak havoc, this time in Texas. A couple days ago, the medical journal The Lancet published a report saying that a conservative death toll in Gaza is 186,000 dead–which equals 8% of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip–when indirect deaths (starvation, illness, disease, etc.) are taken into account. Ten days ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the constitution doesn’t protect unhoused people from cruel and unusual punishment, meaning it’s okay for cities to criminalize people for sleeping outdoors. Extreme weather is difficult even under the best of circumstances (i.e. with housing), and surviving extreme weather is much, much harder for those living on the streets. That’s where mutual aid comes in.

What is mutual aid? Mutual aid is about cooperating to serve community members. Mutual aid creates networks of care and generosity to meet the immediate needs of our neighbors. It also addresses the root causes of challenges we face and demands transformative change. 

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

As it becomes increasingly clear that the powerful elite has no interest in listening to or working on behalf of we-the-people, mutual aid shines brighter as a powerful way to share our energy. I hoped to find a national database of mutual aid efforts around the country that I could link here, but was unsuccessful (many mutual aid efforts started at the beginning of the pandemic have since folded). However, if you do a search for your city + mutual aid, you will get some hits. For instance, Zippy and I help via Rocky Mountain Mutual Aid Network (RMMAN) which collaborates with Joy’s Kitchen to get “saved” food to needy households. We also carry bottled water, granola bars, and masks in our car to offer people flying signs or washing windshields at stop lights. After that disastrous Supreme Court ruling against the unhoused, I came across this very helpful thread listing specific ways to offer aid to the unhoused.

I’ll close with this beautiful poem by the incredible Joy Hargo.

Once the World Was Perfect
BY JOY HARJO

Once the world was perfect, and we were happy in that world.
Then we took it for granted.
Discontent began a small rumble in the earthly mind.
Then Doubt pushed through with its spiked head.
And once Doubt ruptured the web,
All manner of demon thoughts
Jumped through—
We destroyed the world we had been given
For inspiration, for life—
Each stone of jealousy, each stone
Of fear, greed, envy, and hatred, put out the light.
No one was without a stone in his or her hand.
There we were,
Right back where we had started.
We were bumping into each other
In the dark.
And now we had no place to live, since we didn’t know
How to live with each other.
Then one of the stumbling ones took pity on another
And shared a blanket.
A spark of kindness made a light.
The light made an opening in the darkness.
Everyone worked together to make a ladder.
A Wind Clan person climbed out first into the next world,
And then the other clans, the children of those clans, their children,
And their children, all the way through time—
To now, into this morning light to you.
Joy Harjo, “Once the World Was Perfect” from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings.  Copyright © 2015 by Joy Harjo.
——-
Thank you for reading this far. I’d love to hear your thoughts on any or all of what’s mentioned here, especially any further tips/ideas for helping out in our communities. Either way, take good care. Solidarity! ✊🏽

Friday Haiku: on freedom of the press

/ Tracy Abell / 2 Comments

religious school mob
attacks journalist
supremacist frenzy

Note: this happened on June 5 in occupied Jerusalem during the “Flag March.” Palestinian journalist Saif Al-Qawasmi was attacked, first by students of a religious school and then beaten by Israeli police. Journalist Nir Hasson tried to protect Qawasmi and was also beaten. Hasson, who works for the newspaper Haaretz, took this photo. Other images can be seen here.

On this Mother’s Day

/ Tracy Abell / 3 Comments

Just got home from the Auraria Campus solidarity encampment in Denver. Students have been camping on the Tivoli Quad for, I believe, 18 days now. Despite serious fear-mongering from ace reporter Jim Hooley, Zippy and I saw no signs of weaponry or human waste today.

What we did see was lots of love and admiration for the approximately 20 young people from the encampment who received diplomas during “The People’s Graduation.” We heard from one of those graduates who was introduced as an organizing wizard (in just six hours, they organized three actions that spanned twelve hours) and  also heard from faculty members who are in solidarity with the students. As always, the speeches at these pro-Palestine gatherings brought tears while also filling my heart with love and hope.

It was a wonderful way to spend this Mother’s Day and it felt very fitting that the rainy, overcast skies cleared, allowing the sun to shine down on the events. I’ll leave you with this poem shared by one of the speakers.

Solidarity on behalf of all children!

Hamza by Fadwa Tuqan, the “Poetess of Palestine”

/ Tracy Abell

Hamza
by Fadwa Tuqan

Hamza was just an ordinary man
like others in my hometown
who work only with their hands for bread.

When I met him the other day,
this land was wearing a cloak of mourning
in windless silence. And I felt defeated.
But Hamza-the-ordinary said:
‘My sister, our land has a throbbing heart,
it doesn’t cease to beat, and it endures
the unendurable. It keeps the secrets
of hills and wombs. This land sprouting
with spikes and palms is also the land
that gives birth to a freedom-fighter.
This land, my sister, is a woman.’

Days rolled by. I saw Hamza nowhere.
Yet I felt the belly of the land
was heaving in pain.

Hamza — sixty-five — weighs
heavy like a rock on his own back.
‘Burn, burn his house,’
a command screamed,
‘and tie his son in a cell.’
The military ruler of our town later explained:
it was necessary for law and order,
that is, for love and peace!

Armed soldiers gherraoed his house:
the serpent’s coil came full circle.
The bang at the door was but an order —
‘evacuate, damn it!’
And generous as they were with time, they could say:
‘in an hour, yes!’

Hamza opened the window.
Face to face with the sun blazing outside,
he cried: ‘in this house my children
and I will live and die
for Palestine.’
Hamza’s voice echoed clean
across the bleeding silence of the town.

An hour later, impeccably,
the house came crumbling down,
the rooms were blown to pieces in the sky,
and the bricks and the stones all burst forth,
burying dreams and memories of a lifetime

of labor, tears, and some happy moments.

Yesterday I saw Hamza
walking down a street in our town —
Hamza the ordinary man as he always was:
always secure in his determination.

Palestinian poetry, part 2

/ Tracy Abell / 5 Comments

Running Orders
By Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

They call us now,
before they drop the bombs.
The phone rings
and someone who knows my first name
calls and says in perfect Arabic
“This is David.”
And in my stupor of sonic booms and glass-shattering symphonies
still smashing around in my head
I think, Do I know any Davids in Gaza?
They call us now to say
Run.
You have 58 seconds from the end of this message.
Your house is next.
They think of it as some kind of
war-time courtesy.
It doesn’t matter that
there is nowhere to run to.
It means nothing that the borders are closed
and your papers are worthless
and mark you only for a life sentence
in this prison by the sea
and the alleyways are narrow
and there are more human lives
packed one against the other
more than any other place on earth
Just run.
We aren’t trying to kill you.
It doesn’t matter that
you can’t call us back to tell us
the people we claim to want aren’t in your house
that there’s no one here
except you and your children
who were cheering for Argentina
sharing the last loaf of bread for this week
counting candles left in case the power goes out.
It doesn’t matter that you have children.
You live in the wrong place
and now is your chance to run
to nowhere.
It doesn’t matter
that 58 seconds isn’t long enough
to find your wedding album
or your son’s favorite blanket
or your daughter’s almost completed college application
or your shoes
or to gather everyone in the house.
It doesn’t matter what you had planned.
It doesn’t matter who you are.
Prove you’re human.
Prove you stand on two legs.
Run.
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, “Running Orders” from Water & Salt.  Copyright © 2017 by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha. 
___________________________________________________________

Blood
By Naomi Shihab Nye

“A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,”
my father would say. And he’d prove it,
cupping the buzzer instantly
while the host with the swatter stared.
In the spring our palms peeled like snakes.
True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways.
I changed these to fit the occasion.
Years before, a girl knocked,
wanted to see the Arab.
I said we didn’t have one.
After that, my father told me who he was,
“Shihab”—“shooting star”—
a good name, borrowed from the sky.
Once I said, “When we die, we give it back?”
He said that’s what a true Arab would say.
Today the headlines clot in my blood.
A little Palestinian dangles a truck on the front page.
Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root
is too big for us. What flag can we wave?
I wave the flag of stone and seed,
table mat stitched in blue.
I call my father, we talk around the news.
It is too much for him,
neither of his two languages can reach it.
I drive into the country to find sheep, cows,
to plead with the air:
Who calls anyone civilized?
Where can the crying heart graze?
What does a true Arab do now?
Naomi Shihab Nye, “Blood” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Palestinian poetry

/ Tracy Abell / 9 Comments

In order for me to write poetry that isn’t political
I must listen to the birds
and in order to hear the birds
the warplanes must be silent.
 – Marwan Makhoul, Palestinian Poet

Image by Amy Spielmaker from Pixabay

(The following note and poem by Mosab Abu Toha were published in The Atlantic on November 9, 2023):

I wrote this poem last year, reflecting on my childhood under Israeli military occupation. I’m now staying in Jabalia, a United Nations refugee camp, with my wife and three kids. I’m reading this poem to myself and wondering if my children will be able to write poems about the bombs and explosions they are seeing. I was 8 the first time I witnessed a rocket. Now my youngest child, born in America in May 2021, is living through the third wave of Israeli bombing. Not only are he and his older brother and sister smelling death around them; but they have also lost their house in Beit Lahia 10 days ago. Luckily no one was at home. My son Yazzan, who is 8 years old, asks me, “Are our toys still alive?”

YOUNGER THAN WAR
Tanks roll through dust, through eggplant fields.
Beds unmade, lightening in the sky, brother
jumps to the window to watch warplanes
flying through clouds of smoke
after air strikes. Warplanes that look like eagles
searching for a tree branch to perch on,
catch breath, but these metal eagles
are catching souls in a blood/bone soup bowl.
No need for radio.
We are the news.
Ants’ ears hurt with each bullet
fired from wrathful machine guns.
Soldiers advance, burn books, some smoke
rolled sheets of yesterday’s newspaper, just like they did
when they were kids. Our kids
hide in the basement, backs against concrete pillars,
heads between knees, parents silent.
Humid down there, and heat of burning bombs
adds up to the slow death
of survival.
In September 2000, after I had bought bread for dinner,
I saw a helicopter firing a rocket
into a tower as far from me as my frightful cries
when I heard concrete and glass fall from high.
Loaves of bread went stale.
I was still 7 at the time.
I was decades younger than war,
a few years older than bombs.

Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet, short story writer, and essayist from Gaza. His collection Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won a Derek Walcott Poetry Prize and an American Book Award.

From the Sky
by Sara Abou Rashed

After Lorca

When I die,
bury me in the sky—
no one is fighting over it.

Children are playing soccer
with empty bomb shells
(from the sky I can see them).
A grandmother is baking
her Eid makroota and mamoul
(from the sky I can taste them).
Teens are writing love letters
under an orange tree
(from the sky I can read them).
Soldiers are cocking new rifles
at the checkpoint
(from the sky I can hear them).
Under fire, death and water
are brewing in the kitchen
(from the sky I can smell them!).
When I die, bury me in the sky,
I said, for now, it is quiet—
no one owns it and no one is claiming to.