Rising Tide
In 2021, my genesis mint was a poem I wrote for a collaborative piece titled "64 Artists for Palestine." More than half a decade later, here I am pouring out poems for a people whose suffering has only grown exponentially worse.
What’s the point?
The point is: I have not done enough.
To post, or to pick up a pen in protest, is the bare minimum. But to what end?
The martyred poet and professor Refaat Alareer wrote:
If I must die, You must live To tell my story…
The point is this: You must tell it too.
Just last week, a fellow storyteller and brother of mine was awakened by the searing flame of a bomb dropped on the boat where he was sleeping. He was on the Sumud flotilla, you see, and as they docked in Tunis, he stayed onboard to keep watch. His crime? Wanting to get aid to Gaza, to tell the story of those committed to doing so, and to highlight the true hero storytellers those narrating the genocide as they experience it love.
A storyteller is a threat to those who fear the truth.
My point is not speaking up is to give up on Palestinians and to give up on Palestine is to surrender our shared humanity.
To cede ground to oppression and falsehood is to surrender truth itself.
And I don’t think we fully grasp how dark a world without truth can be.
My point is that there are people sacrificing everything for the truth.
What are we willing to lose?
Online, offline, onchain, offchain, on private ledgers, public ledgers, and metaphysical ones.
I hope it’s on record that you spoke the truth.
Whether righteous rage
An impassioned plea
A murmured prayer
I hope you bear witness
It is The Truth that will set us free.
[Lensed off the coast of Sierra Leone * Audio track by Lunar Halo]