Poem by Award winning writer Nanette Rayman-Rivera:
1.
Come! Sail away, come sail away, on your Audacity
of Hope: your version of Gaza is not the real world. How can I leave
you ignorant, sailing the ocean with a lack of clean clothes
dreaming this wrong sort of thing, holding
your letters, smugly
preparing to announce your discovery!
as the blaze of the Middle East sun
truly does burn
being wholly restrained by
the spanking new mall dotted
with wild orchids and aster
by the rows upon rows of oranges and sweets.
It makes no sense
to come a’ courting Hamas, to resist
the eternal fig of truth. It is not déclassé enough, the ruffle those letters make
beating up the buntline: the soul
wants to shimmer, but I doubt that you own one, in our comprehension of
that idea. O Alice, feed your head,
O Alice,
Nazi-headed old nymph from Eatonton Georgia.
Letter-carrier. Racketeer. Perjury Pimp.
You will abandon your slander soon enough.
Your liver-bellied letters and anti-Semitic lies,
your shot-out eye and catawampus fervor,
your love of Dylan and Martin Luther King, Jr.
dissolves in your 100-proof blood.
Do you think I’ll leave you in peace, bald as a cue
ball and nude in the church pew, oblivious
to the charter of Hamas, who would look under stones
to find a Jew to stone. You must not know
how many Qassam rockets we bear, the little suicide
boys & the mortar attacks on Ashkelon falling
down laughing even in August, in the middle of erev’s darkness. You become
also responsible for these deaths.
2.
I am your huckleberry, your psychosis, your greasy stove, Israel’s pure heart,
your Malcom X-ed out, I am the Euphorbia microsphaera growing
from your mad-dog vessel by being poisonous: I am the pain
warning the world: you must need love real bad
to have abandoned the Jews
in favor of Hamas, those heroic Jewish lambs turning
tumbles in their graves, turning ashen in twilight, waves of wild echoes
of Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman not permitted the use
of earth , not anticipating the truncheons & bullets. I must remind you
of those good ole’ boys of Neshoba County beating & shooting those Jews,
the ones who saved you.
So, you can withhold the lies heavy as rain and I’ll be happy
with the hot nights that come so often here, while your flotilla soaks
awkwardly into evil’s crescent moon. Israel’s sun rests in my
eyes, I can always smell you.
3.
I can carry the words of Rav Kahane to foil you—
Above all, it is not decency or goodness of gentleness that impresses
the Middle East, but strength.
You’re the river too lazy to spit out the sewerage, an annual midwife refusing
to cut your fascist umbilical cord. You are the reaper, the cult-whore, dirty sock drawer,
a cavern to fill with sterile manure. In the end, a hole to fill with fertile truth.
I can’t carry Kahane’s words long enough to dissuade you,
although you once married a Jew. Can you picture him
as a boy, hovering in the doorway right by the Mezuzah, a picture
postcard made ugly by you for your cargo. You spread your alfresco on ash,
you say: What is to be done if the Israeli military murders you, where
Code Pink will light every Muslim-sympathizing wretch at the wick
of your self-righteous grody hokum.
4.
Look at me, a Jew, touching my eyes
to make my soul calm, my fingers dry from Southern sun;
in flat land, bursts of pink flowers, nameless—
even here, even at the furthest point from Israel,
even at my never-ending love for Yerushalaim,
my hand wiping my face makes
a figure, not of surrender,
but one of Am Y’Israel Chai!
and I know
I am free to fly past
your audacity.
Nanette Rayman-Rivera is an award winning author, order her book from this link:
Amazon.Com
More on Author Nanette Rayman-Rivera in this link:
Sigrid Daughter
Outstanding!
ReplyDeleteI think it's becoming extremely obvious this flotilla never had "peaceful" intentions, and Israel has every right to defend themselves. I would like to invite you to check out my page, Prevent the IHH Flotilla Towards Gaza http://www.facebook.com/pages/Prevent-the-IHH-Flotilla-Towards-Gaza/117646254988615
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your support.