Radical Love Letters to
Thank you, James Fabris, for inviting me
to participate in a Political/Philosophic Discussion of the Student Movement and the Crisis in Gaza 🇵🇸
Here's a short reading of a few poems from my forthcoming book, PALESTINE WAIL:
***
Open Letter to Israel
He who fights monsters should see to it that, in the process, he does not become a monster.
— Nietzsche
Tell me, what steel entered your heart, what fear made you rabid,
what hate drove out pity?
How could you forget
that how we fight a battle determines who we become?
When did you grow reckless with the state of your soul?
We are responsible for our enemy, compassion is to consider the role that we play in their creation.
‘If you prick us, do we not bleed?
...If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?’
Strange, how one hate enables another; how they are like unconscious allies, darkly united in blocking out the Light.
Yes, we can lend ideas our breath, but ideals — Peace, Justice, Freedom — require our entire lives and, all who are tormented by such ideals
must learn to make an ally of humility.
Truth, and conscience, can be like large, bothersome flies — brush them away and they return, buzzing louder
tens of thousands slaughtered, half of whom are children
no, these are unbearable casualties to ignore
To speak nothing of the intangible casualties:
damage done to our collective psyche, trust, and sleep no more nightmares, please, give us back our dreams we can still begin, again, and must
wisdom is a return to innocence.
✨
Columbia University
Student encampments mushroom across American college campuses registering overdue protests against corrupt governments
here and there and us for failing them...
Sites of the uneasy conscience of the divided states of America
where students are the teachers
Bless these natural born idealists (in other words, peace activists) for their unbridled vision
and unbribable principles
Bless the young for reminding us there is no looking away
no foreign soil
no Others.
✨
Radical Love
Radical love understands #freethehostages means
all Palestinians living
under an inhumane occupation
2 million innocent souls in Gaza 1/2 of whom are bewildered children under the age of 18 being collectively punished
— denied water, electricity,
medicines & mercy —
in one of the most densely populated spaces on earth, casually,
known as an ‘open air prison’
#standwithisrael means denouncing 700,000 Israeli settlers,
since who understands better
the curse of homelessness
and wandering in the wilderness
#supportIsrael means disowning apartheid, ethic cleansing, genocide because we solemnly swore, before as one human family: Nevermore
#bringthemhome refers to the right
of return for some 14 million Palestinians, scattered throughout an indifferent world
Radical love understands there is no October 7, 2023 without May 15, 1948,
our September 11th...
✨
Hope
Hope’s not quite as it seems, it’s slimmer than you’d think and less steady on its feet.
Sometimes, it’s out of breath can hardly see ahead
and cries itself to sleep.
It may not tell you all this
or the times it cheated death but, if you knew it, you’d know
how Hope can keep a secret.
©️Yahia Lababidi