By Pina Piccolo

I.

The planets blaring symphonically
At the rhythm and rage of crickets
You better listen to the dispatches sent
As they scour their delicate limbs
In this summer of orbs and fires running wild

In this longest inhabited city in the world
You skulk to avoid the sharpshooter
Embers under your feet
Can’t even slouch towards Bethlehem
Carrying the weight of a crumbling colossus
On your frail shoulders

Not all that is solid melts into
That scorching Sahel wind
Some is trapped in translucent phase
And powers the blades
That turn the dream

II.

Scatter around the petals
Of that Damascene rose
Wash the feet of the dreamer
Who threads on the thin
Filaments of dignity

She doesn’t fall from a high horse
Blinded by soul numbing visions
She walks the earth
Scattering about
The petals of deferred dreams

III.

You sit in the eye of the storm
As the shackles of the West
And the cowardice of the East
Tighten around the wrist
Of brown hands picking
The rotten fruit of inequality
To be served on the tables of power

You dance in the eye of the storm
As flares breaking free from the sun
Millions of miles away
Perhaps radiate a soul purifying heat

You are blowing in the eye of the storm
As the species teeters
Between dream and nightmare
Evolution or extinction
With its nail of unmanned flight
And its crown of resilient queen bees

– Pina Piccolo contributed this poem to PalestineChronicle.com.