i broke the law and i used a gun

I met Kenny Rogers last night. I was at some kind of junior high or high school event/reunion. I saw old friends and acquaintances. It had the feel of some sort of ceremony; we were in a big hall with lots of seating. The lights were low.

At some point Kenny Rogers got up on stage. I was standing nearby and heard him start a really terrible song but it was great because it was classic Kenny Rogers and everyone, including Kenny, knew it. And he sang a beautiful song; I listened to the lyrics floating in the big, darkened hall. I went up to him and told him that I listened to the Gambler album a lot with my folks when I was a kid. I mentioned one of my favorite songs “Tennessee Bottle” and about how I brought my parents’ tape with me when I went to college and listened to it all the time in the dorms. He was handsome and very kind. I got his autograph after we talked for a few moments. Then I realized how cool it would be if he’d sign something to my mom. A small line had begun and, as I looked around, I saw my mom there, already planning on asking for an autograph.

Later, we were in some sort of hallway, it seemed like a hotel, but I think it was still a part of whatever place we’d been at for the school event. I was walking with two other people from school and Kenny. One of the other people was my old friend Damien, I’m pretty sure. I was dressed in puffy red pants and a puffy blue grey jacket and I wondered why the hell I was wearing such stupid clothes.

We reached some sort of opening in the hallway, a lobby of some kind, with two beds in it. Kenny got ready to lay down in one—apparently, he didn’t have a room for the night. We all talked some more and I gave Kenny a hug and I thought again, why the hell am I wearing this puffy jacket and these red puffy pants? We weren’t all celebrity-worship, we were just chatting but then Kenny said “You’re all starting to hang out,” which, it was obvious, meant “I’m trying to go to sleep now and have had enough.” So, we took off.

I exited some doors from Hughes Junior High and went outside to get my bike. It was dark with a big night sky. Once I got to my bike, there was a combination bike lock around it and I couldn’t remember the combination. So, I went to my grandparents’ place, thinking that if I could just find a calculator, I’d be able to recall the combination. I went into my grandpa’s office and tried to use his computer but I couldn’t remember the password for it. I was a bit frustrated until I picked up the keyboard and a calculator fell out from it. I tried using it but the batteries were dead. The computer had batteries, too, so I took those out and tried them in the calculator, but it still wasn’t working. My grandpa, who was out in the kitchen, heard some noise as I was changing out the batteries and yelled “what the hell are you doing?” He was really mad. I yelled back “all these fucking batteries are dead!” Then he came storming in, really irate. I got up and we yelled a bit as I was leaving. Getting out into the garage, I noticed his black pickup truck was dirty, so I found a hose and started washing it off. I heard my dad’s voice say “I’ll ask Papa tomorrow who cleaned his truck.”

2009 (ode to never having the answer)

an apple
when sliced
and we are bleeding
the ambulance is far away
and will not arrive

so i look at the slices
of apples which in all of creation
are perfect
hard flesh, black
seeds

so, i wrap them up in tinfoil
and gunpowder with a
homemade fuse
"light fuse and get away"
always made me laugh in
the heat of summer alleys
but its for real with these
seeds. i light fuse
and get away

i know my physics, engineering is
all bad
it'll never make it out of the
atmosphere but the shiny package
of life will make it high above, there
to be caught in some continental jet
stream

someday depositing, gently,
the seeds

i don't know what's with the tinfoil
i guess it's all i had in my pocket
during those dark hours
it won't get in the way
nothing does

apartheid and palestine

Gaza is again out of the headlines. However, the struggles in Palestine continue, regardless of corporate media’s silence.

Days after the “end” of the invasion of Gaza, Israel seized 425 acres of the West Bank of Palestine to expand Israeli settlements. Then, on March 2, Israel’s Construction and Housing Ministry’s plans to double the size of settlements in the West Bank, by appropriating more Palestinian land and demolishing Palestinian homes, became public; construction has already begun.

There are over 200 Israeli settlements with 400,000 settlers throughout the occupied West Bank. The settlements are clearly and overtly illegal under international law, and blatantly aimed at making Palestinian independence impossible. The current expansions intensify Israel’s practice of creating isolated pockets of Palestinian communities. The wall Israel is building far into Palestinian territory and Israeli-only roads that dissect the West Bank further separate and cut-off Palestinian communities from one another. The wall, roads, and settlements—tools of colonization—function to create what many identify as Bantustans. This term, which originated in apartheid South Africa, refers to forcibly segregated, unconnected enclaves of subjugated people.

This historical apartheid parallel is why the Congress of South African Trade Unions, representing 1.2 million workers, has called for a boycott of Israeli goods until the situation is justly addressed. Likewise, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union has announced it will stand in solidarity with Palestinians. These dockworkers, many having experienced apartheid in their own lives, took action on February 8, refusing to offload a ship carrying Israeli goods. During apartheid South Africa, this tactic was part of the success of the anti-apartheid movement. In 1963, Danish dockworkers refused to unload a ship carrying South African goods. Workers repeated this action when the ship tried offloading in Sweden. Eventually, British and American dockworkers adopted the tactic, adding to an increasingly powerful movement.

It will take more than courageous South African dockworkers to end the occupation of Palestine. The occupation is alive and well-funded, beyond the use of settlements to destroy prospects for Palestinian autonomy. Gaza is still, after almost two years, under siege. All borders are blockaded; food is scarce; hospitals, schools, water and sewage systems are destroyed. 11,000 Palestinians, hundreds of them children, are in Israeli prisons. The West Bank is still under direct military occupation. Settlements, Israeli-only roads, checkpoints, sniper towers, Israeli military bases, and tanks cover the landscape. Between February 26 and March 4, in events that occur with stark regularity, two Palestinians were killed; another died of an earlier gunshot to the head; 12 were wounded, several by Israeli missiles—including five children and a journalist; and 31 were abducted by the Israeli military. Nonviolent resistance to the occupation continues, as it always has. Last month in Jayyous, a farming village that’s had 75% of its agricultural land stolen by the wall, a Palestinian was shot by Israeli military during a nonviolent protest. In similar protests against the wall in Jayyous, the Israeli military killed two children in December and shot a Swedish activist in January.

Reciting this litany of murders doesn’t adequately explain the devastation of the occupation, nor does it bring about its end. However, as with South Africa, an international movement using diverse tactics in solidarity with liberation movements in Palestine can end this system of death and oppression.