The screaming
children of Gaza
torment the sleep
of a troubled world,
and remain a real-time
unending nightmare;
anointing The Levant’s
fevered brow
with a diadem of
incessant grief.

Gaza is a burning
ankh that sears the
madness of sorrow
upon Egypt’s skull.

Gaza,
an unblinking
third eye
of shame,
peers into
Lower Egypt’s
closed window
ever reproaching
it’s turbulent
conscience;
chiding fellow
Muslims with
the ugly memory
of abject affliction,
the endless images
of a living Guernica
suspended in the hell
of indefinite imprisonment
all Palestinians are forced
to suffer.

As Zionists ***** the
steep walls of Apartheid to
extend its occupation
of Palestine, it
condemns the youth
of Gaza to a life of
incarceration with no
possibility of parole;
hardening the hearts
and steeling the resolve
of a new generation of
militants to demolish the
walls and the wardens
that imprison them.

The Zionist jailers
bestow upon
Ishmael’s Children
phylacteries of shame,
wearing the rolled
prayers of wailing pain
scribed with bits of
dust from the
the broken walls of
demolished buildings
and desolate homes
beyond habitation,
now housing grief
of trampled souls,
forcing recitations
of deliverance
to Allah while
davening an
incessant drone
of anguish at
the Wailing Wall
of Resentment;
decrying the
blood lust of
undying acrimony,
victimization and
the slaughter of
innocents, carried on
with the imperial license
of state sanctioned impunity.


Father Ibrahim's
feuding children may
share a sacred paternity
but remain the
divided brothers
of different mothers;
stoking a sibling rivalry
more bitter then
Cain and Abel.

Our anguish
never dissipates,
the gnawing
impulse of empathy
to assist the distressed
of Gaza is dashed
by omnipotent
powers recusing
the ability to act.

Sympathy is
embargoed
in the black
obfuscation
of religious
partisanship
while timely
assistance
to aid the
distressed
lie netted in
blockades of
realpolitik
affinities.

Gaza, where
Hashim is granted
his eternal rest,
restlessly inhabits
his unknown grave
from the destitution of
his profaned homeland.

Ghazzat,  “the stronghold”
countlessly conquered,
falling to Roman Emperors,
Lionhearted Crusaders
Ottoman Caliphates,
and British Mandates;
slipping from Egypt’s
geopolitical grasp as
as a casualty of
The Six Day War.

Gaza is now a stronghold of
resent and desperation for a
desperate conquered people.

Ghazzat, the prized city of
the western Mediterranean,
a four star Phoenician port of
caravansaries now unable
to trade with any partners
due to ungodly blockades.

Gaza, has grown wholly
dependent on the largess
of UN aid and meager
subsistence portions
doled out by well
meaning NGO’s.

Gaza, the foot stool of
the Levant and surely
the pathway Father
Ibrahim, Jacob,
Joseph and Jeremiah
traveled to escape
Canaan's famine;
finding at the close
of their sojourn
a table set with the
plenteous bounty
the Blue Nile
unconditionally offered;
the veritable feast
of abundance,
the generous yields
of the blessed delta
that sustained the
Prophets of Judah
and a thousand
generations of the
Nile’s Children.

Gaza, the Achilles
heal of Middle East
peace, land of the
Canaanites, Philistines
and Old Testament
heroes.

Gaza, a fortress for
Philistines who
imprisoned the storied
Sampson, revered for
breaking the chains of
imprisonment and righteously
destroying a pagan temple
in a suicidal act of heroism.

Gaza, where the myths and
legends of rapacious
holy crusaders captured
the western imagination
with the chivalrous gallantry
of religious warfare and
valiant last stands of
Templar Knights employing
the tactical imperatives
of terrorism in service to their
higher God.

Gaza, an oasis
by the sea now
lies dry and brittle
as the precious Hebron
waters of Wadi Ghazza
are diverted to serve
the agriculture of
Judah; condemning
a dehydrated Gaza
panting of thirst
to an imposed drought
and a war of
self preservation
to remove
the dammed rivers
of justice controlled
by intractable powers
laying upstream beyond
Gaza’s mean borders.

The Qassams
lunched by Hamas
are desperate
expressions of
exasperated people,
eager to call
world attention
to the growing
insufferable plight
of a people living
in a perpetual
state of siege.

Its a modern day
David slinging rocks
against an armor
clad Goliath.

Each Katusha
serves as
a justification
for Zionist
intransigence
and condemns
any possibility
for peaceful
coexistence
of a Two State
Solution.

The pointless attacks
invite massive
disproportionate
retaliation and succeed
in prolonging and
increasing the
measure of Gaza’s
agony.

The mystic grace,
the divine power
of satyagraha
-a non-violent
response to the
cruel enforcement of
Apartheid- is Allah’s
way to secure the
moral high-ground
and the surest way
for Palestinians to
expose it’s unholy
adversaries innate
contempt for civil rights
and a refusal to
recognized the
shared humanity of
all of Father Ibrahim’s
wayward progeny and
recalcitrant prodigal sons.

Mubarak’s fall
has allowed the
Rafah Gate
to swing open again.

The concertina
wire that separates
Gaza and Egypt
has been removed.

The prisoners
of Gaza have
an open portal
of freedom.

It is a Day of
Jubilee, a day
of pardon for
for the inmates
of prisons built
for victims.  

It is a day of
possibility for peace.  

It is a day to declare an
Exodus from the land
of bitterness.

Humanity is
offered the hope
of escape from
the prisons of
acrimony, to
freely move across
the staid borders
of intractability
and exclusion.

The hearts and
minds of Palestinians
and Egyptians
are free to connect
and unite once again.

Liberation is
possible only
when we uphold
and honor the
affirmation
of all humanity.

Music Video:

Silk Road
We Will Not Go Down

Oakland
2/9/12
jbm

From the alleys and streets, from the door steps and heaths, from the meadows and farmlands,
A mist rises, and forms, from the rivers and rills, valleys and hills, from the fields and fissures
It swirls and turns in the night air, forming and fragmenting, failing and fermenting, till it yields.
A figure, blessed and bare, in the late night air, steps into the moonlight, baleful and brazen in its
Nakedness and knowledge, the pall of the shining moon, drips, Grey and silver from his eyes
Youth drips from his thighs, vigour from his lips and fingertips, crimson is his mouth  and *****.
Lions race across his skin as clouds scud across the moon, feral and wild this child of the moon.
Wild and *****, his face shadowed with growth, excited with his youth and desire. On fire.
Panicked by distaste, his own waste and needs, brewed in a mighty beer of disgust, a sire
Of demons, with packaged might, swooping and rearing, devilish and dervish, spiralled, a pyre.
For the noonday sun, wishing hope on everyone yet giving them night and darkness and doom.
Holds my hand and holds it tightly, grapples with me daily and nightly, even in my own room
Where hope takes hold as quick as fear or death or charity, spilling, humors, ethers, exhume
Nothing but a buried evil that has come to see the light. A paltry being, exhumed, of the night











Whilst over all the night comes creeping
Then I go out a’ stealing,
O’er tombstones and moss, where the dead lie sleeping,
Passing the fungi , sarcophagi, and the smell of weeping
Be it from crypt or hall or farmhouse steading.
collecting the shades of the bodies they’re shedding

Through sunlight’s bright blast
Or twilight’s last gleaming
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping
Through the strongest gale
Or mornings glittering hail
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping.

Whilst the morn sunlight, over hills comes creeping,
There in the shadows, I’ll be steeling,
Darkening daffodils, turning bluebells black and foxglove steeping
Poison filled and passing the narcissi, and the tears of the leaving.
It may be birth or anniversary or wedding.
I’ll be collecting the souls they are shedding.

Through all the breaths that you will still be breathing
And all those breaths that have passed
And all those breaths still to come you are dreaming
One day you shall take your last.
And that’s where I’ll be stealing








Through sunlight’s bright blast
Or twilight’s last gleaming
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping
Through the strongest gale
Or mornings glittering hail
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping.













A ****** of crows blackens the noonday sky,
Called from their nests and eyries
And so many ships have gone by, black masted and steering
Into the wind, Sails tattered and the keel close to shearing
I stand on the nest and watch you weeping
Till the bodies fall into the deepening sea and there lie sleeping
And that’s where I’ll be stealing.

I smiled and laughed
Till the black mast
Fell below the sea
I whimpered and moaned
With those overthrown
Till they lay with me

And I took my place once more at the forefront of man’s destiny.








I crept and waddled and watched and bustled my way to the front of the crew.
I stood behind some and fell behind few; I had come here to see.
I pushed and shoved and elbowed my way to the front, shuffled over and tried to find my pew
I sat with my heart in my mouth, beating doubly in my chest and wondered were the culprit I?

It seemed I had sat in the stalls or in the balcony, way out in front
But it seems I had not sat at all just fell into the orchestras’ well.
But I remembered that I had sat, adjusted my clothes, my underwear, my hat.
As a man should do, are we not gentlemen and so I took tea and sat.








Paying court; To the girl with the blue eyes and the thin lipped smile, the girl that knew.
As most girls do, the thoughts of men, or think that they do. And I so I tried to find her,  
But it seems I had known a Girl with no thought of love, no turtle dove, cuddled
Close, no heavenly host, called to her, but she loved as love must befuddled
Drew her breath deeply but not freely, Took air, perspiring, muddled
Thoughts spinning in her head, amazed, this pale eyed temptress, The girl that knew.
As most girls do, emotions that drift, or think they do. And so found herself alone,
And weeping, a girl that did not know that they could love found that they could.
She murmured words of love and shook sand from her pelt, howled to the moon.
She stood tall on her haunches, praying , baying, to the moon goddess, one of hers.
Baleful eyes pale and moonstruck, seemed star struck with love  a mother with her curs.






Not the focus of her attention, her pale imitation, a pale shape creeps from the crepuscular woods
He slinks into the shadows of the night paying court to this matron, with his smell warmth and lust
She stalls and smells the night air
Little of care, for all stalks the night air
She sidles and smells the night air
Nothing there, In the dark and silent dream that is the night air.
She bridles and hush’s as the night drips onto her
She has cares; for children that whisper in their sleep on the night air.
Bovine, equine, feline and canine and warm fur
A sleep comes upon them all, a pale imitation of life, and a pale shadow creeps into the light.
And smothers the light of day languishing in his power and majesty sending chills unto the living
He waits in the darkness and shadows.














A child mutters unknown words and the time has come to die
Utters words of fortune and Questions your reasons why.

My dear, my love, child, why do you cry?

I shook myself awake
From my bed of dreams
And warmth
I pulled the duvet over
Took to my feet and felt
The chill

And so I stood, took my bow,  and then knew everything, everything about what I was witnessing,
She looked at him and he looked at she, both knew nothing of how its going to be.
I walked downwards, right down the stairs And I saw everything even the killing thing
He slapped her face and she bloodied drew the knife for all of us to see.
A joyous muse, my heart sang,  witnessing the killing, witnessing the killing and I knew everything.
He looked up at her, she down at him, she was so lucky that she had set him free.
I watched with glee for all I could see, to jail the police said as I sat, as I sat listening.

I heard your excuse I hear your plea, please madam judge don’t let that happen to me
She stood in the dock and sat on the chair,  and told everything, the things I’d been witnessing,
Told how she had murdered he, in a fit of rage it was not her fault she should be set free.
Not the judge, not the jury, but I knew everything and shed knowledge of my fury.

I remember the blade, I remember the fury. I now have to thank the jury.
A just verdict, a wrong righted,  a sacred trust bighted.  And just penury.


















These children are mine sayeth the lady
Though the money I earn is a little shady
I look after them through the day
And at night none can say.
Little darlings,
Wont come to no harm, I keep them apart,
Little darlings, are always in my heart.
Sleeping and dreaming and held apart,
They’re just kids and held in my heart.  

Through sunlight’s bright blast
Or twilights last gleaming
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping
Through the strongest gale
Or mornings glittering hail
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping.



I have heard your thoughts ideas and whims
I have heard your excuses , you hacked off a limb,
Because he was bad, she was a devil, and I have never heard so much drivel.
She was a monster, he was a slave, you never thought of the love that they gave.
I saw you had it hard and it must have been so bad
It was trouble, never ever had you been so sad
She was a *****, with an eternal itch, a witch that was not worth forgiving.
She was a dragon, he was a monster,  it was no longer a life worth living
She pulled me down, he dragged me down into a cesspit of hope.
And off they loped into the night.















'
Publicly he seemed alright, not the ***** that he really was. She was so cool en vogue, en vie,
She pulled the love from this heart like a harvester, reaping all that he could sow, all that she was due.
She meditates on her  betrayal and justifies it to herself and thinks so few, so very soulless few
Would not, and she is more, so very much more and then lifts the knife and delivers his due.
In the early hue of evenings last breath, he drew his and she smiled, just his due.






Sorry tales; I know
Tales no one should know
Tales that diffidently show
The differences, the shocks
All the stops and blocks
That love mocks
In its immortal way
Tarnished and bloodied
It soldiers on, unhurried.









I looked for the heartbroken, the tarnished, the burned; and found them all
For there were so many. Loves that went good and bad; those that hurt  and those that fall
I looked for the unforgiving and hopeless and found them all, some happy in their own way,
The traitors of love I looked also for and found hopeless and alone, shriven but hearty in their own way.
I looked to the martyrs of love, those that have loved deeply and have lost,  for many do







And I was one that did. I knew love as pure as a mountain stream,
Unsullied, clean and precious, but no love is as true as the perfect love
No thing is just as wondrous and perfect as it may  perfectly seem,
Chaste, virginal, and all just yours, lest it be a gift from angels above.

And I loped off into the night
Full of sweat and blood,
Flushed with heaven above
And hell below
Both knew my hollow soul











And through sunlight’s bright blast trampling daemons I came, shamed and hollow
Risen from this earth, cursed to death, in twilights last gleaming, brazen but sullied
The seeds of doom are sown  by such as I  and they were sown deep and fertilised with blood
And reaped by those that know,  reaped by hands that touch, lips that kiss and know,
hunger and want, lust and lie, eyes that darken and hooded, draw lust from liars,
Build from truth funeral pyres,  and fires for the ****** and yet I remain and sullied
Smirk with each passing glance or circumstance at the great and good, the unwashed
The hooded and deep, the shallow and callow, the wanton and unwanted, the sane
And simple, the masterful and master less, musical and malleable, the strange and straight.

These I trampled under heel with little feeling or thought
The form I took was human, the place I came from; dread
I looked and watched and took note, I spoke and listened
Pay’ed heed,  Culpable and crazed, yet my form remained,
this spectre.
Dying now.
Paid heed.

It was hard to miss Jerry
in the corner
holding court
over the bran muffin.
Flurries of judgement and wisdom
flying across coffee dappled pages
as he sentenced a large cup of
Paruvian Dark Roast
to be ******.

7 am Dan never flinched
steeling his tenured chair at
a spot one section of stir sticks away
calculably just out of reach
of the regularly scheduled tantrum.

An auburn-haired newbie
fanes camoflage
peeking over two pages of Obituaries
she never intended to read.
Her raised and nearly detached eyebrows
hover above the dateline like a magic trick.

And on every table fall
scattered leaves
of press print trees
unsorted and littered with intent
by careless absorbers of trivia.

Disconnected
ear-budded
footnotes of humanity
see nothing
hear nothing
using the disarrayed World News as
enormous coasters
unmoved by hyper-ventilating compulsives
pushing panic buttons through
desperate quests to uncover
one alphabetically organized set
of local news.

Of the papers not strewn
the remnant holds anxious
on a distant wall
a throng of flopping
rabbit-eared
step children
dangling precariously
from unaccomodating magazine racks
like smoky orphans from
windows in a fiery building.
Disordered.
Disrespected.
Discarded...words are
Jews in the holocaust.

Death of a voice.
We are irreverent in our silence
diminishing genius through apathy
put off by the imposition to be challenged
choosing disposable principles
above responsible knowledge.
Everything is disposable - cameras, cars,
relationships, loyalty, babies...and wisdom -
crumpling Pulitzer prize authors
and discarding WW2 veterans
just to get to the cartoons.

I am waiting for this daydream
To fizzle out, die
For him to finally prove
This relationship is just a lie.

That everyone else's words are right
This ice is too thin
I must be crazy if I trust
And waste time with him.

I will only end up getting hurt
I know what's at stake
I'm telling you from the start
It is a chance I'm willing to take.

I might be a fool but I am
Ready for what turmoil may come
I am steeling my heart for the moment
When everything good comes undone.

I do not need your "wisdom"
Your bias and bitter advice
If he breaks me to pieces
You are not the ones who'll pay the price.

You do not understand my world
And to you I will not explain
I'm going to leave it at this
My happiness is worth the risk of pain.

i hate you for the scars you've left,
steeling my piece of mind,
i hate your ignorance, and your
weakness.
you're so selfish, cruel and blind.

i hate your judgements,
and your ego.
your so predictable, shallow and hollow.

and you hate me because im nothing like you,
but u cant steel my light,
because i figure that if you hate me,
i' must be doing something right