Arrows shoot across a playing field
where the rules of the game 
are predetermined
And a sharp smell of grass 
Fills up empty air

no-brain, anti-smart
Palin voters crave selection, 
And the blood of freshly
eliminated dead meat;
Through cross hairs
they set their sights

pretending that standards

and what they have termed merit 

prove the worth

of their spoiled lives,

Rotten hearths,

Carrion brats. 

They who aggrandize themselves
by crafting a carpet
of less worthy, mostly brown, pelts
they lash out at us,
We who hold fast to the strength
they want so badly to pretend they own

They are babies gulping formula
For the vitamins their small bodies
Can’t produce by themselves

Calls for civil dialogue

and an end to divisiveness (rhymes with permissiveness)

in the face of this preening brutality

are calls to leech our power

But we know anger
is a rope
a sinew that binds and hoists 

it may be unladylike
but it is bounty
and the anger inside us is deep
it keeps oppression from assimilating
and keeps rules from fashioning 
us into good girls
with glottal stopped voices
choking syllables downward

I say get angry
Don’t hold back
Don’t stay calm
about the things that matter
Shake the foundations
Upon which they have built
a fragile house of matchsticks
in a tinderbox city of a thousand sparks.

A simple white headscarf

which someone has posted up

right in the heart of Tel Aviv,

a city she was forbidden from entering 

in life;

and behind her is Goliath,

a sprawling tower of vulgar brute nonsense,

flashy shops,

espresso bars,

conspicuous camouflage

to erase her presence in this land;

but she is here in death to take her rightful place,

defying professional men of war,

inculcated in this nasty fight from their youth;

she leaves them dizzy and stumbling

wondering how they could possibly lose

to someone so small? 

Checkmate...

She is the smooth white stone

lobbed into the face of great might;

the small axe which fells

the big tree with a tiny tap;

she is the foundation which stirs

underneath imposing structures

built with the finest materials,

but which, with the slightest twist of her hip,

splinter to scrap and kindling;

And these fools,

these ammei haaretz,

once strangers in the land of Egypt, they'll have you know, 

turn their heads this way and that

to hide from her,

to pretend that they are still in control

to declare that they will regain their bearings

with smoother talk.

But the truth is forward motion

and sticks right between their eyes

like spots of light,

like the face of this village woman,

her suffering cloaked behind a milky fog,

which cannot force her to fade away.

The photograph which inspired this poem was taken by Israeli Jewish activist Joseph Dana, on the night more than a dozen Israelis were arrested for protesting the Israeli military's use of toxic tear gas against non-violent protesters in the West Bank. Jawaher Abu Rahma died on January 1st after inhaling this tear gas. Her brother, Bassem Abu Rahma, died a year and a half before when an Israeli soldier shot him in the chest with a tear gas canister during a demonstration. Special thanks to my friend Max Blumenthal for sending the photo along and for reading multiple drafts of this poem.

Coffee bubbles up like rage

with a scent that could rouse souls

dead a thousand years;

Brown love and bitter grinds

sparkle at the bottom of an oddly shaped vessel

with a deep, deep base;

The Israelis call this pot a Finjan,

but that is actually the name of the cup

served alongside it,

The people who belong to this place

call the pot an Ibriq--

so like Israelis to mislabel

this thing that threatens to boil over

at the touch of an inexpert hand;

so like them to misunderstand!

They never miss an opportunity 

to miss the mark;

to think that recklessly taking lives

in another language

is forgivable

so long as they gleam in English,

and honey coat theft sickly sweet

with talk of Jewish security,

and cry accident

as though their intentions

and the Holocaust

were all that mattered

to a mother without her children, 

salt running over her face

creased with carved-in pathways to guide tears downward,

the son and daughter

she raised up with care, vanished

in poison fog.

There is no sacred, easy separation

only liquid in a pot

mixing until what seemed clear

is thankfully muddied,

and rules which choke the brave 

are warped and woven

into new fabric.

This poem is inspired by the life of Jawaher Abu Rahmah, who died during a demonstration yesterday in the village of Bil'in. Please visit: 

http://mondoweiss.net/2011/01/bilin-protester-dies-of-asphyxiation-caused-by-...