Now is Always a Good Time
S13
Hi friends,
I like the idea of timeless poetry and fiction. Essential truth resonates and we can pull inspiration from it at any time. Topic-based work feels more for an occasion, but I’m reconsidering this notion since work is not just about the event, but the sentiment.
When we speak of war, we can also speak of hopeless and our lack of action, how we might align with an oppressor and be blinded by loyalty. A lot of us will do nothing and feel the paralysis of despair. What’s the point when my act can’t affect anything? We can acknowledge that feeling, but also realize it’s not one person who can make changes, but many voices and hands acting in concert. We’re all drops of water that make a sea.
We also need to hear from the people who live within a conflict, where we learn that their sentiments are indeed timeless. There is not a single time to talk of war. Now is always a good time. Now is always a good time to remember its impact, especially when the machine is ramping up while we sleep.
Won’t You, Please?
They asked me to donate
To Palestinian children
To give a few dollars because
Babies needed milk and
Their siblings needed clothes
Left tattled from blasts
And falling rubble
And running for their lives
I stayed away from the pleas
Inside I knew without speaking it
That the bombs would not stop
Until every tiny eye went cloudy
Until there were no little hands
That would grow up to fight back
They would not stop
And that money
Would be like dust in the wind
Like all their discarded bones
I heard the poem “Running Orders” for the first time this month, narrated with shaking video of developing chaos. It’s a disturbing portrait of someone’s life flattened to rubble. This genocide, over half a century long, has planted battlefields on every parcel of land touch by Palestinians. It’s a sobering look at what it’s like in an apocalypse that people are forced to endure.
Running Orders
They call us now,
before they drop the bombs.
The phone rings
and someone who knows my first name
calls and says in perfect Arabic
“This is David.”
And in my stupor of sonic booms and glass-shattering symphonies
still smashing around in my head
I think, Do I know any Davids in Gaza?
They call us now to say
Run.
You have 58 seconds from the end of this message.
Your house is next.
They think of it as some kind of
war-time courtesy.
It doesn’t matter that
there is nowhere to run to.
It means nothing that the borders are closed
and your papers are worthless
and mark you only for a life sentence
in this prison by the sea
and the alleyways are narrow
and there are more human lives
packed one against the other
more than any other place on earth
Just run.
We aren’t trying to kill you.
It doesn’t matter that
you can’t call us back to tell us
the people we claim to want aren’t in your house
that there’s no one here
except you and your children
who were cheering for Argentina
sharing the last loaf of bread for this week
counting candles left in case the power goes out.
It doesn’t matter that you have children.
You live in the wrong place
and now is your chance to run
to nowhere.
It doesn’t matter
that 58 seconds isn’t long enough
to find your wedding album
or your son’s favorite blanket
or your daughter’s almost completed college application
or your shoes
or to gather everyone in the house.
It doesn’t matter what you had planned.
It doesn’t matter who you are.
Prove you’re human.
Prove you stand on two legs.
Run.
Here’s one of my favorite poems that I think of often:
On Politics and Poetry
In order for me to write poetry that isn’t political
I must listen to the birds
and in order to hear the birds
the warplanes must be silent
I meditate on this because our political existence is a force against force applied to us. These are systems we cannot break down, only resist. I know it’s easier to bullshit and shitpost and sometimes we need to. But we should think more of war, of the battles all around us large and small. Then maybe, in between those chaotic moments, we can clutch those fragments of peace tightly and shore ourselves up while we wait.
What’s next?
Running orders just gave me goosebumps. Thank you for this.