Wishes, I never said...?
Rolling tongues, admit appearances
Are deceiving, but purpose to lead...
Has an ear for a rainbow's chances

Rainbows lead to pouting voices...
Facing the stare, I make a quiet
Collective memory served; has choices...
The reagent of a house of colors, so bright

Star's that starve?
As the moment indicates...
Your rhyme for the silent, is another's liar...
Privilege behind a scare, finishes the irate

Races of fate, found in a valued youth...
Respite is to be, an awkward challenge
Of a time, that accuses you for couth...
Curses of final fear, are often to nearer mention

The fright in the rain
Told to sit, by a silver voice...
Sigh's and minding, the candor of pain
Will such a song, begin here with loyalty?

Does and doesn't...
Shame wear a passion's decision?
Deciding upon, a notorious lesson won't
Is a handful of salt, the only shared intuition?

Liberty, at all costs...
And a hill named only rage
That worth's the world, with hosts
Sent to a wish, I made...

Time be a liar's friend...
One step more
Like love and hates marvel, to lend...
The story of reach, is who's war?

Fit to be tied to a ligand gated receptor,
mind you,
right there, in the area below our own aptness
to think and do at once, thus we think without
knowing we are

thinking
things,

new and old, linked by local nodes arranging ions,
in channels previously lacking bridged interchanges.

Instant one past then,
we re think,
if we remain, persisting at or on some certain point,
may we not, mainly almost completely, be self aware?

The gaps insulating our separate selves, as we imagine,
thoughts outside our heads do remain connected rectly
ortho dexterous… sinister off, right on. Switch,

transcendence, sit zazen intently making bits of this
peace.
Inner, breathing conscience, knowing used, to pay
yourself, first

love, neighborly behave, have love as for your self.

I, the boss mind, I, the chooser of destiny from now,
I, ego and id and all, me, you must acknowledge,
I was here when you arrived, in an acknowledged,

innocense, not ignoring a curio juxtaposed, sup-
posed to prompt a why from your own self, why
am I not kind to me.
I am no better than I can imagine proving, to myself.

I must convince me, you are merely watching me be,
in a mind state seeping from a spring I cleaned,
to channel a flow a bit thicker than a seeping…

Sit with me a minute,
measure the brevity,
leave be the reason, I wished to feel you there.
Knowing how I love you, determines the worth
of my own love.

I see you here, now.
Phased out in dreamscapes.
Eclipse the conscience,
Those things lost in different states.
Screaming out my name-
Gentle lips, kiss my face

I always wanted more for myself,
wanted to be memorable,
but now I barely remember most of my life.
Sometimes, I consider who I am,
study my reflection hard in the mirror
contemplate whether it's really me
and then ask if this is who I want to be.
What a responsibility it is
to carry this human flesh to the end
and to act in favor of this restless, desirous mind
for the entirety of a life.
Most of the time, I hardly register my life and world around me
and thus behave mindlessly,
and now I'm realizing that time is more than a concept
and that age will one day take me by the throat.
I've tried so hard to figure myself out,
but I suppose I should spend less time in my mind
and more time taking up space in this body.

When my conscience cannot get out
afraid of fainting of myself
I have to settle for laws

the books of emergency dressing
for blood that I don't want to see
for a wound they should have prevented

If necessary, we fight it out
in court or with God
on our side, I have help

of lawyers and soldiers
priests assist me
the loudest word is up to me

If necessary, I will stop the world
until there are new laws
and then I'll start anew

if all goes well

my mirror
has been screaming at me
for a while
I chose to walk away today
but it began to follow
became a black shadow
creeping into my cranium
to stay

broken reflection
in my head
that closing eyes
couldn’t save
shaking the grains
in my brain
didn’t help
like shattered glass
it slithered and sliced
my skin and scalp

cutting the chords
of light from my eye
bleeding fingers from braille
left me blind
without vision
there’s no escaping
the mirror
of reason
in my mind

”Don’t look!”, mother said
“It’s not for your eyes to see”
So it sat there, that little red box
in-between curiosity and me
“Be a good boy and put it down
promise to never open the lid,
You never un-see, or undo
a memory, you wish you never did”

I traced the edge, gave it a shake
and placed upon it my ear
listening what may mysteriously make
that ruffle from what I could hear
So I sat a lot, wondering what
could possibly be inside
It’s only a peak, I’m much too weak
my conscience I cannot hide

It can’t hurt, no one will know
after all, it’s just a little look
I’ll open and close, see how it goes
no harm, just like a book
tempting as is, a ‘sorry’ can’t fix
I wish to have kept my word
when mother was gone
and I, with the box alone
peeped in and out flew a bird

The Story
by Kamal Nasser
translation by Michael R. Burch

I will tell you a story ...
a story that lived in the dreams of my people,
a story that comes from the world of tents.
It is a story inspired by hunger and embellished by dark nights of terror.
It is the story of my country, a handful of refugees.
Every twenty of them have a pound of flour between them
and a few promises of relief ... gifts and parcels.
It is the story of the suffering ones
who stood waiting in line ten years,
in hunger,
in tears and agony,
in hardship and yearning.
It is a story of a people who were misled,
who were thrown into the mazes of the years.
And yet they stood defiant,
disrobed yet united
as they trudged from the light to their tents:
the revolution of return
into the world of darkness.

Kamal Nasser was a much-admired Palestinian poet and Palestinian Christian, who due to his renowned integrity was known as "The Conscience." He was a member of Jordan's parliament in 1956. He was murdered in 1973 by an Israeli death squad whose most notorious member was future Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Barak (born Ehud Brog) later ruled as Israel’s tenth Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001. His adopted Hebrew name Barak means "lightning." As a younger man, Brog/Barak was a member of a secret assassination unit that liquidated Palestinians in Lebanon and the occupied territories. In the 1973 covert mission Operation Spring of Youth in Beirut, which was part of the larger Operation Wrath of God, he disguised himself as a woman in order to assassinate Palestinians. The raid resulted in the deaths of two women, one of them an elderly Italian. Two Lebanese policemen were also killed, along with the poet Kamal Nasser.

Nasser was the PLO's most prominent Christian and he enjoyed "great appeal" in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq "both as a distinguished poet and likeable personality." He was the “conscience of the Palestinian revolution,” according to Nazih Abul-Nidal, who worked with him on the magazine Filastin al-Thawra. Nasser “had the most democratic outlook of all Palestinian leaders at the time,” he recalls. He respected opposing views, admired the commitment of young people, and was a major recruitment asset for the Palestinian revolution. “That is why he was put high on the hit-list.” The previous year, the Israelis had murdered another renowned Palestinian writer and activist in Beirut, Ghassan Kanafani, by *****-trapping his car. Nasser’s successor, Majed Abu Sharar, was also assassinated by Israelis, in Rome in 1981 while attending a conference in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Keywords/Tags: Kamal Nasser, Palestinian, Palestine, PLO, Conscience, Ramallah, Christian, religion, poet, Arab, Arabic, Arab Spring, betrayal, conflict, courage, devotion