Skip to main content

The Prisoners

(click to enlarge)

1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine (and World War II and Palestine)
End of the British Mandate 1945–1948
1948 Palestine war
Clash in Egypt Over Gaza Aid Effort 2009

O! How happy the prisoners in their own land seemed before this! All smiling at the chance of relief and food and breath, feet firmly planted on a shrinking plot to the west of the Jordan River.

The prisoners have no rights, no government, no land or love. No history to hold, no child to mourn, no passion, no art. Hostage to giant machines, to guns, to tumbling shells and terror, prison guards, tanks, and the rising wall, yet they do have rights and governance and land and love and history and child and passion and art- truth.

O! How happy the prisoners of their own land seemed before this! Facing the Mediterranean, the great watery span between home and the press of hate, the Jordan and Dead Sea behind, vultures awaiting their anointing like bone-filled ovens. Soil dried in the blood and upon the exodus of footprints, their insistent freedom marching hard upon the heels, screeching a national lullaby that will never be cleansed of history but that falls upon ears that have long been numb to truth.


© 2010 by mark prime


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ROOT OF

"For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs." __1 Timothy 6:10 It is MONEY, not the LOVE of it that is the issue, the true problem. Love, in and of itself, is never a problem, WANT and NEED, or better yet- the WANT and the conundrum of its very REQUIREMENT for our survival IS the problem, it's creation and our blind use of it is logically the ROOT. In other words, let's leave LOVE out of it altogether and deal with the facts instead. If money were not made by us as a requirement for our survival, we'd find ourselves in a much better position to argue of its need and our want of it. MRP Peace and Love © 2015 Mark Richard Prime
Post a Comment
read the poem
........•SHRIEKING MACHINE•........                  •HEAD-LINES•                           •RIP•     ---(“Russian missiles blast Ukrainian military academy and hospital, killing more than 50, officials say”)---    There are no more lessons to learn here, no more beds to hold the human wounded, just missile’s shrieking their grotesque ode, The Death of Humankind! RIP, children of God…    ---(“Hundreds attend Mercer Island vigil, march for murdered Israeli hostages”)---    Dear mourners, this is the brutal vacuum of a genocidal, terror-filled, indiscriminate war-machine made of fear and we are all hostages to its deafening roar! RIP, children of God…    ---(“10-year-old allegedly confesses to fatally shooting 82-year-old man and his daughter”)---    I must confess, this is part of war’s shrieking, children lost with a we...
Post a Comment
read the poem

sdrawkcaB nruT (Turn Backwards)

I have been witness to the four pillars and see no reason to carry death there. Doesn’t the world know that life moves for more than just the sons of Abraham? O! I see the stunned throats floating by in the dusk to their stiff-limbed sleep as metal rains down over the Jordan’s western prophet, children dying there. I am here, waiting, breathing in the dusk under the shadow of the patriarch, asking, can we again build the shrine inside the soul and leave our flesh to time? © 2008 mrp/thepoetryman
32 comments
read the poem