Veins Like Rivers Flow
Watch, remember, speak up, fight back, and hold each other close at every step
A tendril of rage courses through veins tainted blue blood
Thorns extend through limbs gone slack
Roots split off in every direction mindlessly seeking
Home in a house that's barely a shell
From a blazing sun glare blinding and blanching
Bones that are just brittle beams of a structure bent
(Though never broken)
As critters crisscross across a chest cavity that holds too much ache
Screams still echo in bone marrow
A brother's cry lingers as he holds blue-lip tainted brother
As brush and bramble overgrow and weeds decorate rubble that still rumbles
A mother digs until numb fingers paint dirt crimson
Every family tree has a branch burnt or still left burning
A house once a home lays crumbled
A system we pretend is bent and not broken
Continues to break backs and brittle bones as if there is still fresh air to fill in a chest cavity
Instead of white phosphorus that clings to a name that will not arise again
There is so much rage seeping into once-nourished soil
Now left as a reminder that existence is an inconvenience
A weed, a thorn, a cavity
Something needing to be plucked, clipped, shaved down until
Nothing remains
And remains lay as reminders of genocide that hasn’t been stopped
But you are not forgotten
You are not erased
One day Palestine will be free from the river to the sea
And water, not blood, will flow and fill in all crevices and cavities
Nourishing this land again
About the Creator
Oneg In The Arctic
A queer storyteller and poet of arctic adventures, good food, identity, mental health, and more.
Co-founder of Queer Vocal Voices
Water is Life ✊
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Comments (9)
Indeed they will be.
One day Palestine WILL be free! This has been decreed. Your poem is a fitting remembrance of the immense needless suffering endured. It must never be forgotten. Our hearts must hold them all.
As summer has been going, I've noticed that the call for cease fire and and end to the genocide has lessened. Thank you so much for bringing light to this issue!
A vivid picture painted - phenomenal piece Oneg! 👏😊
Impactful with every line like a gut punch 🤜 my dear friend this is beyond brilliant
this was incredible. so much struck me - from the mother digging to the white phosphorus clinging and the allusion to the olive trees. "From a blazing sun glare blinding and blanching" made me think of the old saying about the sun never setting on the british empire. its influence and fuckery things we still feel and work to liberate ourselves from today. yes, history repeats, but it also evolves. i think a lot about the map of us military bases around the world. imperialism fully facilitated by modernity. and by a democracy, no less! you are right. one day, palestine will be free, from the river to the sea. and on that day, we will all gain liberation, even if only to a degree.
So very sad how genocide iscan happen over and over again. Thank you for sharing this. 😢😭
Wow. I didn’t realise what this was about until the end… it genuinely felt like you were describing my present living situation, and Sri Lanka 😳 Very well done 👏
Just wow ... I got shivers. Tears for those suffering, rage at the inept people that won't put a stop to it all, and a heart breaking for the families torn apart by this senseless action.