guantanamo you are not only poetry
guantanamo you are not poetry at all
all you accomplished was
the blood you sucked.
afghanistan, iraq,
african capes,
southeast asia,
where all the streets and avenues
you've chewed and spat
was the fresh flesh fragranted
with the new blood of ours.
guantanamo, do you know me?
i am from yemen.
through the plastic tubes,
prepared by the hottest ovens,
especially for the death factories,
what you gave me was
only the question,
"are you hungry?"
soon, the venomous bubbles of gas
in the matrix of your imperial insolence
answered,blasting it into the void.
guantanamo, you must have known
nicholas nickelby, the teacher.
when the children of dotheboy's school
braved to be hungry,
mr squirrel, the principal, poured sulphur liquid
into the dry throats of kids;
mr smike,the poor boy who absconded,
was brought back;
this time blows were given
on his cheeks by mr squirrel,
instead of the sulphur gruel.
and then it was this nicholas
who blew on the cheek of squirrel
and uttered, "wretch, touch him again"
as a reward for his punishing smike.
you are more cruel than his uncle ralph;
i say this, as your ancestors came
from the same england;
you can't help rising such a detainment
to pay tribute to your mother
guantanamo,you are not at all a mother.
are you smiling at cuba?
no guantanamo, you can't.
your smiles won't bring to you
even the smallest grain of sugar
to smear on your tongue
your smiles won't bring to you
not a counter of cigars to puff on
moazzam beg uttered:
what did you say? fed us?
ha! don't you know, we are fasting?
we all refused the gruel mixed with
your venomous milk.
if our ancestors had fed us with native venom,
it would have been far healthier and tastier
than a drop of poison from abroad.
that's why we are on hunger strike.
this hunger is not at all greater
than the soil of our land, we know.
the plastic pipe you pushed into our throats,
vomited the fat and odour of olive oil
into our stomach,
how soon it passed out!
we heard mr leonardo, your bosom friend,
whispering keeping the lips hugging your earlobes:
"it was simply a flow of foams and bubbles!"
when mother reached us feeding
what did you do to her?
mother only surrendered to death!
you unclothed my father and raped him,
hung him head down,
inflicted heavy blows on his medulla,
pierced his urinal pass-ways;
your drainage brimmed with blood he spewed;
you left him, from a purposeful hearsay,
we all knew, for a natural death.
we see dear mr robert ,
in the celebrated city square,
you were spending time with her.
the silence of the midnight has flung her
squeals and screams into the air,
that echoed on the walls of the detainment,
and shattered on the floors,
like a big glass pane falling from the window.
guantanamo,you are not at all poetry...
do you know what my bosom friend
mr samir naji al hasan moqbel
in the detainment told me?:
"the chest piercing pain;
in my throat, in my stomach -
all, all pain only.
but for the cause of my land...
so never mind!"
guantanamo, i've never forgotten:
the moaning of a girl;
your durant was raping her,
moazzam beg never wept
when he said this.
he raised his hands
to shout against something,in vain...
"this is tormenting, mere infliction,"
the four men-inmates uttered.
a man with scowling vision
came as if he were the physician,
he said: "we look after them well, nursing too."
this time the watchdogs never burst into laughter.
[this i wrote when thoughts of social obligations, freedom, society, hope, pain, dark contemporary events, depression occurred to me. guantanamo has become the symbol of cruelty .. .nothing more to say]
moazzam beg : ex-convict in bagram theater internment facility and guantanamo bay detainment camp
Still Life of Possessions and Egg Cup -- Muhammad Ansi
Hands Holding Flowers through Bars -- Muhammad Ansi
guantanamo you are not poetry at all
all you accomplished was
the blood you sucked.
afghanistan, iraq,
african capes,
southeast asia,
where all the streets and avenues
you've chewed and spat
was the fresh flesh fragranted
with the new blood of ours.
guantanamo, do you know me?
i am from yemen.
through the plastic tubes,
prepared by the hottest ovens,
especially for the death factories,
what you gave me was
only the question,
"are you hungry?"
soon, the venomous bubbles of gas
in the matrix of your imperial insolence
answered,blasting it into the void.
guantanamo, you must have known
nicholas nickelby, the teacher.
when the children of dotheboy's school
braved to be hungry,
mr squirrel, the principal, poured sulphur liquid
into the dry throats of kids;
mr smike,the poor boy who absconded,
was brought back;
this time blows were given
on his cheeks by mr squirrel,
instead of the sulphur gruel.
and then it was this nicholas
who blew on the cheek of squirrel
and uttered, "wretch, touch him again"
as a reward for his punishing smike.
you are more cruel than his uncle ralph;
i say this, as your ancestors came
from the same england;
you can't help rising such a detainment
to pay tribute to your mother
guantanamo,you are not at all a mother.
are you smiling at cuba?
no guantanamo, you can't.
your smiles won't bring to you
even the smallest grain of sugar
to smear on your tongue
your smiles won't bring to you
not a counter of cigars to puff on
moazzam beg uttered:
what did you say? fed us?
ha! don't you know, we are fasting?
we all refused the gruel mixed with
your venomous milk.
if our ancestors had fed us with native venom,
it would have been far healthier and tastier
than a drop of poison from abroad.
that's why we are on hunger strike.
this hunger is not at all greater
than the soil of our land, we know.
the plastic pipe you pushed into our throats,
vomited the fat and odour of olive oil
into our stomach,
how soon it passed out!
we heard mr leonardo, your bosom friend,
whispering keeping the lips hugging your earlobes:
"it was simply a flow of foams and bubbles!"
when mother reached us feeding
what did you do to her?
mother only surrendered to death!
you unclothed my father and raped him,
hung him head down,
inflicted heavy blows on his medulla,
pierced his urinal pass-ways;
your drainage brimmed with blood he spewed;
you left him, from a purposeful hearsay,
we all knew, for a natural death.
we see dear mr robert ,
in the celebrated city square,
you were spending time with her.
the silence of the midnight has flung her
squeals and screams into the air,
that echoed on the walls of the detainment,
and shattered on the floors,
like a big glass pane falling from the window.
guantanamo,you are not at all poetry...
do you know what my bosom friend
mr samir naji al hasan moqbel
in the detainment told me?:
"the chest piercing pain;
in my throat, in my stomach -
all, all pain only.
but for the cause of my land...
so never mind!"
guantanamo, i've never forgotten:
the moaning of a girl;
your durant was raping her,
moazzam beg never wept
when he said this.
he raised his hands
to shout against something,in vain...
"this is tormenting, mere infliction,"
the four men-inmates uttered.
a man with scowling vision
came as if he were the physician,
he said: "we look after them well, nursing too."
this time the watchdogs never burst into laughter.
[this i wrote when thoughts of social obligations, freedom, society, hope, pain, dark contemporary events, depression occurred to me. guantanamo has become the symbol of cruelty .. .nothing more to say]
moazzam beg : ex-convict in bagram theater internment facility and guantanamo bay detainment camp
Hands Holding Flowers through Bars -- Muhammad Ansi
Guantánamo (Taíno for “land between the rivers” – the Bano, Guantánamo, Yateras, Guaso, San Andrés and Sabanalamar rivers in Cuba) was founded in 1797. It was captured by US forces in 1898 during the Spanish-American War and leased by the Americans in 1903 for $2,000 a year (increased to $4,085 a year in 1974). A naval airbase was established there during World War II; its airfield code, GTMO, is the basis of its nickname “Gitmo.” In 2002 president George W. Bush established a detention camp there to house “enemy combatants,” mainly captured in Afghanistan (though 80% of the remaining detainees had been turned over to American authorities by Pakistanis and Afghans, often in exchange for bounty payments of $5,000 per prisoner). Because they were not formally enrolled as prisoners of war, the Geneva Convention protections were deemed inapplicable, though since 2006 some of these protections have been provided, though the right to a trial as provided by the US constitution has not been extended to them. In 2004 the International Committee of the Red Cross accused the US military of using "humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, and use of forced positions" against prisoners and condemned the camp as “an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture." Of the 41 men still held there, only 10 have been charged or convicted by military commissions; nine of the others have received any sort of trial. Though the sea is only a few yards from the camp, it is invisible to the inmates, since the fences are covered by tarpaulins. Art classes were offered as the only permitted therapeutic available, and sometimes the new artists gave their work to their lawyers for safekeeping or as thank you gifts for their efforts on their behalf. Every blank sheet of paper, everything detainees touched, had to be inspected by guards and cleared for use, and detainees would work on their art while shackled to the floor. Subject matter was tightly controlled, so many of the paintings were reminiscences of home or imaginary seascapes. In 2016 an exhibition of detainee art was held in New York, including pieces by Muhammad Ansi from Yemen, who was held there for 15 years before being deported to Oman in 2017. The attention given to the art prompted the military to prohibit further transportation of the paintings from the camp and notification that they were govern property and would be incinerated if their creators were released. Shelby Sullivan-Bennis, a lawyer with a human rights advocacy group, commented, “The ban on art that made the US look bad was absurd already. But a ban of painted flower pots is just inane.” The exhibition’s curator Erin Thompson went further, complaining that “burning art is something done by fascist and terrorist regimes -- but not by the American people. Art is an expression of the soul. This art belongs to the detainees and the world."
ReplyDeleteCharles Dickens published his 3rd novel "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby" as a serial from 1838 to 1839. In book form it established him as a major writer. Even before the serilization was finished Frederick Henry Yates filched it for presentation at his Adelphi Theatre, which had been repeatedly plagiarizing Dickens' work since 1834. The stage version's resolution was wildly different than Dickens' own (since it was not yet finished). Dickens took his revenge by introducing a "literary gentleman' in chapter 38 of his book, who bragged that he had dramatized 247 novels "as fast as they had come out – in some cases faster than they had come out," thus bestowing fame on the original author. Nickleby responded heatedly, "If I were a writer of books, and you a thirsty dramatist, I would rather pay your tavern score for six months, large as it might be, than to have a niche in the Temple of Fame with you for the humblest corner of my pedestal, through six hundred generations."
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