CTSD
What’s PTSD that you are currently living?
CTSD
The trauma you’re currently facing
Your will the state keeps breaking
Like snapping beans
Or chicken necks
Human beings focused on daily survival
Not living
Making it through day by day
While others plan a vacation
Survival is the vocation
Of the oppressed
Full time — no days off — no reprieve
“Are we going to die today daddy?”
“I wish I could just die today mom”
“There’s food in heaven”
“No cages in the hereafter”
“Maybe I’ll see momma”
Anything to be free
Of this daily routine
Wondering
How will I survive the day
My current trauma — trapped
In the carceral state
And Gazan city streets
Depth of Truth Under Covers of Darkness
The news came and I reeled
As undercover of fighting terrorism six journalist were
“Assassinated”
My eyes flooded as I lay
Caged under the cover of “justice”
A light snuffed out in the world
Voices of truth silenced
State sanctioned violence against “terrorists”
Judge, jury, executioner
No chance for a deliberation
Fascists commit perjury on the stand and skip to
The hanging
I’ll always know that day
Just like 1948 — the Nakba never ended
Only death is the end for some
Carceral state or Gaza’s city streets
In the concrete jungles of the U.S.
Millions’ only relief
Is death
A slow burn in capitalism and colonizer clutches
The world doesn’t bat an eye
Instead drops its gaze
Covers their face
Hoping it’ll all go away
Occupied Violence
Genocide: 6am — darkness persists
Silence broken by news of “war”
Genocide
More like hearing Gazans trapped while I
Lay in my cage
Keys jingle as they come to feed
But I don’t cuz Gazans can’t eat
I cry while Gazans cant speak
Awake while Gazans can’t sleep
60K and counting
Millions caged
Millions displaced
Palestine the carceral state
All collateral damage
I resist in the pages
Go to war in these cages
I know no other way
As bodies decay
Walls in our concrete graves of gray
Fluorescent light creeps in
My occupier’s keys jingle again
While rifles crack and bombs blast
Lives and time one can’t get back
Darkness
It never left
Anas Al-Sharif Martyred
And it’s a living hell — the people are but zombies
Living in conditions not suited for fleas with nothing to eat
Gaza’s once beautiful city will one day be free
Resistance is essence, heads high we will survive
The sun will rise on truth
The darkness can’t keep
Should they kill me I ask but one thing please don’t forget Gaza —
“Commander that’s a direct hit
Target confirmed
6 additional casualties — that’ll stop your reporting”
Red Balloons Over Gaza
Photographs
With some paste that strips the wiry enamel from my
Teeth
Pictures hang
Stuck to concrete walls of my sarcophagus
By my head
Forever smiles
Fractured families
Missing a human
A son on his birthday swiftly blows out his candles
Though
They never go out
His wish? Never granted
Family portraits
Matching clothes
Smiles forever; though
Who’s absent?
Loves of my life
With no hand to hold
Frozen stares
Gazes fixed to follow
Hollow and heavy as my heart weighs
Trapped in this cement grave
This carceral site of decay
Image
Imagine — a home for every human being
You get what you need
Not a burden to society
Free to just “BE”
Outside any binary
Everyone a sibling
Greetings with willing and warm intent
Not competition
No masters of borders
No manufactured scarcity
Touted as world order
No race dichotomy
One race humanity
No gendered mentality
It’s on a fallacy
To establish hierarchy
Imagine — none
Many families you choose
Outside the one you’re born into
Letting the world be your muse
to find “IT”
Purpose — ever-changing
Never worthless, love’s your compass
Summer Sunday Sonnet
Mother’s hair up in a bonnet — locking a hijab
Never a jub — four of those
As fried chicken pop’s grease burns her wrists
She does not fret — hers is a long line of
Non-complainers
The dutiful Muslim
Abandoned
6 kids in a bedroom shack
Like so many blocks
Still slavin’; away on plantations of today
Yet home on a Sunday
A smile creasing her lips
6 little kids run around and play — “don’t run!”
Not in “my house”
No
Risk of a chance to break something inexpensive
Yet all we have
The perspiration on her face
Reminiscent of slaves working fields
Still
Coming home with scraps
To fill
A child’s belly
Her look of resolve as she
Husks corn
Peels potatoes and mashes
Snapping beans
Season’s cabbage
Generations of habit
Struggle, strife, poverty in her DNA
Perseverance, fight, strength we try to emulate
Not a hair of grey
Black don’t crack — as they say
We sit down for prayer
And give grace
“Bismillallah”
She starts
Thanking Allah
Quick to never forget