The Interior Castle

Nights are lonely,

days too

The light

The light

All this light

The curtains

The big screen television

The plate

The cup

The knife

The fork

They’re lonely

They talk about Gaza 

less and less these days

It’s quietened down

The question is rather about Trump,

and does he have 

a chemical imbalance

Grief,

well, grief comes to me in waves,

with fanfare and declaration

If I say 

that I will 

remember you

Will you 

remember 

me too?

What is this grief?

What is this sadness?

Let me sit beside the sea 

and count the waves 

Let me sit here

and remember your face 

in my hands, or as you

turned towards me,

your hand in mine

as you confessed

that your heart loved me,

as you proclaimed that I was beautiful,

as we regained hopefulness

that we had found each other again 

in the wilderness

of the lost years

Even now I find 

novel meaning in your absence,

You left me with the strength,

a power and will

to carry on

I want to tell you that

with my whole heart

You’re not here

You’re not here now,

anymore

Yet you’re alive for another woman

Grief in my heart

biting at me like a rat

cutting at me like a knife

Stay there in the wilderness,

make a home there

Marry another

Marry the woman in your life

Make her your wife

She’ll call you husband

as I lay in this bed,

this ward,

this hospital

As a city, Gaza,

is under siege,

as children die like flies

I remember the 

chocolate bar I gave you

The one the magistrate gave to me

You were beautiful to me,

kind to me

I called you “Husband”

Yes, I did

I did

Now I write these sad poems

to reach you

Do you finally understand 

who I am as a woman?

It’s come much too late

Your understanding of me

All I have is the flowers in your eyes

This grief and melancholia,

this daylight,

the smell of the meat burning in the pot

Well, they all taste like tears to me.

The shape of your neck

I am a wave

I am tired

I am as tired as a wave

The wave is inside of me

The wave is Gaza

The wave is a shack

The wave is waiting to be liberated

The wave is the Freedom Fighter

The wave is the land

The wave is the title deed to the land

The wave is the doorway to humanity

I am a wave

I am the water in the wave

I am tired

I am tired

Comrade, I am tired of waiting for freedom

The wave is a bird

The wave is Charles Bukowski’s

Linda vacuuming

The wave is an empty glass

The wave is the rot in this country

The wave is blue

The wave is full of cloud

I am the wave

I am tired

Letter To A Poet In Gaza

There is one moon

There is still bread

There are photographs 

of who you were before 

this madness

buried under rubble

There are roses and life

Life!

There is the laughter of a child

But in war what do you have?

There is no birdsong,

only a cage,

only this prison,

only the camps

To survive you write

You must!

You have poems and poetry,

the ability to write,

and that must be enough,

sufficient in a sense

to keep on going,

to keep on living, 

to keep on breathing

It must

But one thing I wanted 

to ask you is this

Do you still smile?

The Child In Time

Sun bright and hot

I have no clock

to count the hands of time,

the length of this war

Sun, why aren’t you happy?

Is it because children are dying?

Sons and daughters of the earth,

of Palestine,

of the Muslim world?

Is it because ordinary people 

are turned into martyrs

by bombs and airstrikes?

I sip green tea in a tranquil garden,

a calm sea of green

but I’m angry

Angry that another daughter has no father,

that they aren’t being educated

to the tune of philosophy, poetry,

literature, political science and economics

There is no music in war unless 

musicians are playing instruments

There is no you without me

Can’t you see that?

Mothers cry for their sons

Stop, please stop

Make it stop

Children are crying 

for the ethnic cleansing to stop

This morning all there is to see

is an avalanche of rubble

I left you standing there

Was it yesterday

Who knows how far you 

have travelled by now

under a bright sun,

under a hot sun

Who knows when we 

will meet again traveller, 

child in time?

Just remember this

You are not the genocide

that the world 

has forgotten about.

Cloud People

By Abigail George

The clouds

I long to see the clouds

People

I long to see people too

Sometimes I see people

in the clouds

Sometimes I see 

your brown eyes too

Cats and dogs

Well, where are they?

Only skulls remain

A few years ago

there were flowers 

on the table,

there was oil, flour and water 

to make bread

Now there is only the salt in the sea,

the cold reality of war, 

of hunger, of innocence lost

It hurts

It hurts

It hurts

The membrane that is your silence hurts

The gland that your loneliness consists of hurts

Yes, even your memory hurts

It just reminds me of your absence

Yes, it hurts

Every night in my dreams I ask you

When are you coming back to me?

I am waiting for your return.