People of the Rocks
Falasteen
I live in the land of the free
I live in that only democracy
I carry a special color-coated card,
to show my identity
I drive with a color-coated license plate,
to show my ethnicity
I even walk on my own
Special roads
That carve our cozy ghettos
I'm wished no vice
I must say,
my torture is done only with the most sophisticated device
My Bantustan is separated from my father's
By trenches and checkpoints set by the military
The water is forbidden
Dare it run in this community
Bless the concentration camps of the Gaza Strip
Your beautiful destitute defiantly exist
To everywhere and nowhere
I take the long way
To my segregated school I risk bullets
To prove I'm not a fool
And I will not be intimidated
By the shelling of my classroom
They say I'm a beast
On us, their dogs feast
And when my shelter is made into an inferno
No one has to know
Armed settlers attack me
Day and night roll
A ball of fear
Yet the capable doesn't have the will to act--even when my pain
They see
And my plead
They hear
Curse 1948
When my people's soul--for the sins of the west--
Was nearly executed
Their scream for help
By the world was muted
I've been fighting their war tanks with sticks and stones
And the order is to break my bones
Their children sing about the world's despised
And their wish to rid the world of us-one by one
With these feet I stomp on them
With these teeth I rip their skin
With these lips I sip their blood...
They sing
And they say I'm violent and blood-thirsty
Because I don't welcome them when they come to kill me
Their voices are filled with worry
Because my hands are empty
And still
I refuse to surrender to their authority
Their eyes are filled with hatred
Because my feet are bare
And still
I haven't died from despair
You're the occupier who aims for the body
And misses the spirit
With every slice of the heart
You strengthen the spirit
Cleanse this land all you can
Haunted by this people's soul you will be
Or can you give up this air that you breath?
And rain, rain, rain
Merciless game
Your first rule is to kill
The last is to maim
Tonight
Might be the night
American steel
Rain me to sleep
And tomorrow will be a day
Rocks will reign
From tear to nerve
Gas
From rubber to steal
Bullets
The young are laying on the hospital floor
And their mothers are up in roar
Little ones side by side
Their nerves paralyzed
The backyards and the graveyards are meeting
And grandfathers everywhere are screaming
Someone else's death
Is nearing
Where's the refuge
in refugee?
Here you can run or crawl
But in a second you fall
There's no place to hide
Under occupation and apartheid
The old and the young are crawling on all fours
And school children with book bags
Looking like old rags
Some of them loose their lives
And some of them loose their eyes
And we're saturated with images so surreal
That some of you no longer feel
Oh my cousins brutalized corpse
Is your spirit resting peacefully?
They pierced your hands
Needle shrubs
Melted your skin
Cigarette buds
It had been months since
They shed your red
Left you on a hill--
Until found by a shepherd
And even when we try
To burry our dead
Inside the cemetery
Gunshots heard.
Infuriated they were
After disguised men regained your body
And so a haste burial
In night's secrecy...
And what of you who were exiled?
Oh great-grandfather
Oh great-grandfather how many died your death?
Living on the edge
Sheltered by the falling rain
Dying on flour and unsanitary water
Clothed with a brittle layer of dignity
Staring
Over imaginary boarders
Watching them
Dance
And sing
And laugh
And stand
Over what used to be your home
And was there ever a moment that the tear parted the eye
After your sacred olive trees were not spared
Sentenced to die?
Uprooted...Like their caregiver uprooted
How many of you lived The nightmare?
And survived off of The dream?
And when exactly
Did you give up the fantasy
Of the revival of humanity?
Yet whatever was wreaked by reality
You said The Return is inevitable
All faithfully
Oh if you knew
More than half a century later,
We still do
How many of you died while praying for The savior?
Knowing you will not be forgotten
By a world that never remembered you
It didn't have to say its name
Was simply the last again
How many more tears?
For how long silenced screams?
And what are our tears
Rivers
That meet an ocean
The native...Lost because he can't forget
The slave...Whose wounded whole was patched up with a single thread
The robbed destitute
Whose bellyache is too severe to be cured
With food
The Forgotten
Every land is an occupier's promised land
And a land flowing with milk and honey this one once had
Today our remaining blood and tears
Run thru the roots of your remaining trees
A refugee in your native land
Your home and your death camp
And others refugees in the world around
Children of The Rocks
People of The Rocks
Your will is so strong
Steadfast in your lone stance against the wrong
You're the essence of dignity
The ruthless is dumbfounded
Distressed by your resiliency
Keep the fire that's been running thru our veins raging
Rage against that dying rage
Rage with the raging trees
That curse the hands responsible for inflicting on them
Atrocities
Rage with the raging soil
Pulsating this story
Rage with the raging birds
That pray over your mass graves
Rage with the raging rocks
Of the ancient mosques
Rage with the raging bells
Of churches over the hills
Rage with the raging sky
That will one day testify
RAGE
People of The Rocks
RAGE
R A G E R A G E R A G E
Generations of Rage
And even if they resigned with age
We carry ours and theirs
R A G E R A G E R A G E
Let the world say you're crazed
R A G E R A G E R A G E
Raze this cage
R A G E R A G E R A G E
I heard someone say
When the flood comes
Nothing remains
In the valley
Except its rocks.
RAGE!
Falasteen is a Palestinian-American woman currently practicing law in Florida. She wrote this poem during the first weeks of the Second Intifada.
