Blood and Rage

Two poems of love and resistance

Jaber Jehad Badwan, “A girl walks inside Gaza to get food” (August 2024). CC BY-SA 4.0

by Peter Hardie

Liberation Road is pleased to publish two poems by founding Liberation Road member and movement leader Peter Hardie.

Palestine

rubble and olive trees
hospitals and aid stations
underlined in blood

teeth, fingers,
body parts
a slow disappearing of life
death covering everything like the concrete dust

too many names
too many unnamed
too many unfound

no pretense of sanity, 
or humanity

death’s machete large and terrible
maiming,
spattering blood and
bits of bone
on our faces,
sharpening itself on our indifference.

time now to remember our heart, 
to mourn, 
to resist the warmongers,
to uncover the world of humans,
and the home of Spirit.

Tamir

No twelve year old
black boy
will
be understood—
this world,
this world is not that clever.
he
now
aloft where you fear
and hope,
where you dream.
is he joyful?
do not ask,
lest the moment be lost
like blood in a playground
and police testimonies,
or like love.
where ancestors plot
he now grows,
finally
no revenge, no anger
he is buddha
smiling the tears of his parents falling without sound,
divining paths for you.
what gun what hoodie what down jacket what madness what world
we
we are at sea
rage our light and compass
what twelve year old is this?
Tamir is God.
and if not
there is only fire.

Peter Hardie is a veteran member of Liberation Road, the trade union movement, the Black liberation movement, and other social movements of the 70s and 80s in the US. He is a poet, father, sailor, Buddhist, and abolitionist.