arno!do garcía

Your colonialism did this to me

Your skin did this to me

Your 99.9% dropless blood

Your redlining

Your redneck

Your monotone monolingual Christianity

Your tone-deaf tongue

Your flat-ass flat world

did this to me.

*

Notes for my Palestine war

Anwar Balousha

mourns his five daughters

killed by an Israeli Apache [sic]

helicopter that fired mssiles

at a mosque in Jabaliya

Anwar's house was destroyed

by the blasts

Four of his children escaped

Samar, six years old

Dina, seven years old

Jawaker, eight years ofld

Abram, 14

Tahnir, 17

were all crushed to death

where they slept

Five missiles

one for each daughter

Five daughters

one for each missile

five centuries

five Malinches

in the refugee camps

in the migrant camps

Israeli drones in the dark night

looking for their targets

using infrared television cameras

found the five sleeping beauties

five dreaming peace or love

or family or fast asleep resting

getting ready for the next day

But how do you get reay

for the next day of bombardments

of atrocities of F-16 jet fighter pilots

who destroy mosques,

homes, school, universities,

markets, killing and maiming

Palestinians?

Even the ruins are Palestinian.

*

Gaza,

all the missiles

all the bayonets

all the tanks

all the soldiers

all the armies

are hunting you

All they can do is give us time

to prepare for our turn at war

at the fountains of blood

where Israel is quenching

Palestine is rubble under the bombardments

crushed children crushed women

crushed men

who will continue resiting

as dust as ruins as slogans as martyrs

at our marches

as the ultimate dream of freedom

that can only be crushed

by an ignorant enemy

Nowhere to run or hide

what kind of satellite is needed

to hunt down a people

the tables are turned

Israel is driving Palestine

into the sea

and Palestine will become

the largest country in the world

Palestine Palestinian ocean

and you will have to be beg, ask permission on the knees of your ancestors and soul

for at least 500 years

to cross

to bathe

to swim

in our liquid nation

to enter into the realm of our catastrophic borders

the U.S. submarines will snk

the gunboats, the warships

the corporate petroleum pirates the nukes

will be grounded

Israel buries Palestin

and the Palestinians

grow roots an underground

seed that flowers

without dynamite strapped

to her waist

that furrows under and causes the occupation to cave in to sink

in the aquifers of our loud tender mouths

Israel makes Palestinians mourn, twists and maims

their bodies, blasts apart

children and measly armed men,

Israel believes he is winning

76% of the Israelies support the war

they lie, hate cannot be

measured by wars.

*

Oscar Gaza

Broken windows

over a man shot in the back

over a man unarmed

laying face down

with four cops on top of him

shot in the back

a case of a mistaken bullet?

But what color was this Gazan in East Oakland?

who breaks windows, burns cars

who shoots us in the back

who is guilty

who is free

where is Gaza

where is Oakland

where is your sea our ocean our country of open arms and caresses?

Note: these are poems 23 and 24 for April Poetry Month. I was unable to post the 23rd poem on April 23 because I was busy working with communities responding to the rising apartheid and Jim Crow segregation in Arizona, after AZ Governor Janet Brewer signed into law SB1070, which makes racial profiling and discrimination legal. SB1070 give police the power to question anyone they suspect of being undocumented and to investigate private and public agencies, employers if they are serving or hiring undocumented people. Take four actions for justice in Arizona and to denounce SB1070 here.]