“The Side of Love” video for my poem

This might be the last one for a while. I need to regroup and recover my weary troops of invisible little helpers.

Here’s the link to THE SIDE OF LOVE, a poem dedicated to the late Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish. Music from El-Funoun.

Images from the photo galleries of the International Solidarity Movement. Footage of Israeli forces bombing Gaza borrowed from kaiserx30.

Saying No to the Business of Injustice

As much as I admire pop bands like Faithless, Gorillaz (love them!), Carlos Santana, Elvis Costello, The Pixies, Gil Scott Heron, Devendra Banhart, Snoop Dogg, and The Klaxons (the list goes on) who declare their reluctance to perform in Israel, there might be another option.

It is certainly a brave thing to say no to your fans and to high-level exposure, not to mention the big bucks.  It might be braver to go there and tell the audience that ticket sales will be donated to pay for much needed medical supplies for the people of Gaza.  Now that would be something else.

WHY FAITHLESS ARE GIVING ISRAEL A MISS

Exhibit A: Israeli Propaganda Exposed

Dream of Balloons

When you stand in front of an edifice like this, whether it’s here or outside a township in South Africa, or in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War, or in Berlin in the 60s and 70s, it’s something you know instinctively that this is wrong…what’s it doing in the occupied territories, surrounding settlements and cutting (Palestinian) farmers off from their olive trees and so on and so forth?…This is an exercise of colonialism.

Roger Waters

The Dog and Its Master

The Dog and Its Master

With a firm wave of the master’s hand
the dog sets off, sharp as a dagger
its nose cuts the wind.

Over and over, this lesson is taught
the dog quickly learns
whom it must seek, sending hairs on end.

They conduct this concert of violence
with such precision, in the end, with the slightest
twitch of the master’s brow, the dog
flies swifter than a bullet, finishing off a prey.

Israel, which are you?

-o-

Playground Versus Bulldozer

We take for granted
The simple pleasures
Of two legs dangling, swaying

Back and forth to push the seat
Of a swing further and faster,
Passing point of rest again

And again until the chain that holds
Stops ever so briefly
Perpendicular to the ground.

Breath held for a split second,
Then screams
Of laughter unleashed.

However one looks at it,
There is no room for a bulldozer
In this memory.  No room at all.

-o-

Ctrl Alt Shift Film Competition Winner : “No Way Through”