Palestine's Wailing Mt. Rushmore

Foreword

NAKBLINKA:  The Cleansing of CoExistence, touches the soul of humankind and awakens its buried emotions.  The poetry of Dom Martin cries out for an end to the infliction of cruelty and death upon the oppressed peoples of the world.  The central axis of Nakblinka is the commemoration of the 22-day siege of Gaza by Israel in 2008-2009. Two thousand years ago, Herod slaughtered the children of Judea, and in an appalling replay, the descendants of Judea are slaughtering the Holy Innocents of Gaza.  Whether we call it self-defence, war crimes, crimes against humanity or some other phrase for such barbarity, mere words cannot salve the deep sense of shame we all share in a world rife with a multitude of atrocities, compounded by ‘Silence’ and ‘Complicity’.

           Thousands of years of history recording devastating wars and inhumanity appears to have had little effect on present day morality – as witnessed by genocides and cultural destruction such as the Holocaust, the decimation of Tibet, the slaughters in Africa and Bosnia, and the horrendous wars in the Middle East. Time and  resources are squandered and some of the finest minds put to the ominous task of perfecting and deploying instruments of torture and mass destruction.  The collective ego of the aggressor nations dulls the conscience of its peoples and patronizes their illusions of superiority as they feed on violence, control, greed, selfishness, and racial prejudice.  Killing and violence, war and nuclear weapons, torture and death, are sanctified in the name of National Security or the Will of the International Community, and few question whether these methods of negotiation might amount to madness and insanity.

             Dom Martin’s metaphors call us to a deeper awareness, as Beings, of the tragedy and suffering that is the result of our unwillingness to coexist peacefully with one another.  Nakblinka challenges us to break down the walls and choose to change by transcending the collective ego and birthing a new Consciousness of Beings who live in knowledge, acceptance, and appreciation of the unique qualities that each tribe of humankind contributes to enhance the spectrum of Existence.

           As we approach the second decade of the New Millennium, replete with the intelligence and magic of the Electronic Age, all the pieces are at hand for the realization of a global truce of nonkilling based on understanding, compassion and the goal of communal harmony.   NAKBLINKA:  The Cleansing of CoExistence, is one such piece that shines as a catalyst in the universal media.  Dom Martin’s truth-telling and honesty heralds new hope of peaceful coexistence for all inhabitants of our undivided planet.

                                                                                          —  Mairead Maguire

                                                                                                Nobel Peace Laureate, 1976        

Dedication

To

The People of Palestine

Whose Biblical Homeland

Is in our midst

In the kinship

Of CoExistence

THE DISPLACEMENT OF HUMANITY

The displacement of Truth:

Is Nakblinka!

The displacement of Hope:

Is Nakblinka!

The displacement of Native Americans

Is Nakblinka!

The displacement of Africa

Is Nakblinka!

The displacement of Europe

Is Nakblinka!

The displacement of the Middle East

Is Nakblinka!

The displacement of culture

Is Nakblinka!

The displacement of civilization

Is the War on Terror!

A Bird

That has eaten

Soars!

In Gaza

No bird

Has flown!

1.5 million:

Incarcerated;

Human stateliness:

Desecrated!

It's Nakba

Not Nafta;

It's Nakblinka

Not Treblinka!

! 

From corporatism

To imperialism:

It's a collage of gulags

Bantustans

Afghanistans

Iraqs!

 It's xenophobism:

The metabolism

To corporatism

Bridged by munitions

Unabridged by renditions!

 The Face of DU

Amidst our sacrosanct lies

Behold!

The child of innocence

Comes born

With no eyes!

Ghoulish tumors

Genetic sores

Patenting deaths . . .

It's the DNA

Of our War on Terror

The cherubic wreaths

To our lethal armor!

It's humanity that's dead

As we continue to be led

By the reluctant progress

Of God’s egress!

God hasn't defected

Is merely splinted

In the one-way access

To our political abscess!

Alas!

The bird flutters

As the UN utters

Another veto!

The bird died

Of  DU

As we congressionally lied

About what we knew!

THE SECOND CRUCIFIXION

The Global Christian community is predominantly aware of the first crucifixion and venerates the event with unprecedented faith and fervor.  However, it remains subserviently silent to the second crucifixion, occurring in the very consciousness of the first crucifixion.

The face of the Palestinian child below epitomizes the second crucifixion of the Christ child insomuch as it embodies Palestine’s forsakened plight and reality. 

This poem is dedicated to the Children of Palestine, Afghanistan, the Balkans, Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere — who continue to be blatantly exterminated by the cataclysmic will of the international community.

Palestinian Child injured in the

2008-2009 Israeli siege on Gaza

Before Shoah

Was Noah!

Life

Was an ark

Of coexistence

Unlike the arc

Of strife

And indigence!

Death

Was by grace

Unlike by assassination

Funded by the wealth

Of nations

Of dubious trace!

Before politics

Was ethics!

Humanity

Was an island

With a homeland

Walled on all sides

By the tides

Of integrity!

Hope

Was a stethoscope

Between God

And Good

Between prophets

And existential facts!

Before Christ

No heist!

Palestine

Had no deadline

To existence

No hoodlums

To its vast dunums

Of olives and incense!

The child roamed freely

Throughout the breadth

Of breath

Merrily

Unbridled

Unblooded!

ICONS OF INNOCENCE

Coexistence

Is humanity’s Title Deed

To survival!

In human greed

Comes the revival

Of  belligerence!

There’s protectorate

In the electorate

To incorporate error

With power

And power

With terror!

Death is aimed

The mother framed

The cradle claimed!

Survival is maimed

Existence walled

Justice stalled!

*

In eternity’s sanctuary

No obituary!

The children are awake

In ageless play

Watching reincarnation display

A sovereign stake!

*

Death

Has been our annual aid

To date!

Hope

Is Gaza’s yoke

Through our roadblocks!

In Gaza’s carnage

Is the Quartet’s entourage

And the viserage

Of international laws

And outlaws!

Silence, alas

Is the quilt

Of our guilt:

The ballast

Of our conscience

And omniscience!

Let there be COEXISTENCE and within it:  PALESTINE

The coming into being empowers the inherent right to coexist in the place of one’s birth.  Occupation, to the contrary,  is the politization of this inherent right — the degradation of ethics and the very laws that came percolated from.

Out of lack of humane understanding and approach, we have slotted life between homo sapiens and those fit for slaughter (animals) and others for extermination (pests). Occupation, attempts to declassify humanbeings into the latter category for slaughter and extermination.

It is virtually impossible to reverse the mentality that all animals are fit for slaughter and pests for extermination.  We can, however, stabilize and firmly establish the mentality that all beings, regardless of faith or ethnicity, are worthy of coexistence.

This poem is dedicated to all those of non-Palestinian origin, who sacrificed life or limb so that the eyes of the international community — thus far occupied by ignorance and indifference — may finally open to visualize the legitimacy and realization of a Palestinian State.

Resistance

Is the insistence

Of coexistence!

No walling

Or stalling

Of the equitable!

Triumph is inevitable

Occupation

Is the compaction

Of damnation!

No wailing

Or killing

Of the unclaimed!

The Quartet is to be blamed

It is time to rhyme

Freeze with ease

And peace with release!

Time for freedom

To become

The awaited kingdom;

Time for home

For the forgotten exodus

In the desert’s dust!

It is time to prime

Truth with crime

And guilt with verdict!

No other edict!

Coexistence

Is the desistence

Of inexistence!

No atoms

Batons

Or depleted cantons!

OMER ABED AL-AZIZ MOSQUE

The Omer abed Al-Aziz Mosque

Was God’s portrait.

Why take God out?

Did God refuse to shout

When he was ordered out?

Is God on the other side

Of the Rafah crossing

Denied plebiscite:

Afraid to be seen!

Is sin

Without sentry?

The Omer abed Al-Aziz Mosque

It was all that Gazans had

When the global community

Turned its back

And promised redemption

Through the network

Of collective silence

And tunnels for kernels!

The Discoloration of CoExistence

In the eyes of a Palestinian:

Occupation is the scenery of sanctions

And unctions:

The discoloration of CoExistence!

The Quartet's circuitous Roadmap

From Oslo to Annapolis:

An excursion of mishaps

And the incursion of more walls!

In the lies of the Global Will:

The future for the unborn

Is as still

As stillborn!

The MidEast envoy:

Another decoy

For the looming convoy

Heralding extermination!

In the eyes of a Palestinian

Freedom is a Green Zone

Patented by political clones

And classified disdain!