(For my friends who love falasteen despite any and everything)
i am so tired of you palestine

they told us you were ours
yet i saw the light for the first time
in lands akin to yours
close but not yours
they told me when i could open my eyes
that you were full of wonder
men women lived as angels under your trees
they told me fairy tales of princes that kneeled
mad with love
on their knees
they told me you were bountiful
generous
glamorous
an atheist
some said sacredly religious
some say darkly
magical
they said you carved the stories
of all the myths possible
to shelter humanity
your perfection
complete
flawless
you were the essence of their trinity
the word that came before we knew of this silence
the water of river adorning you
holy water absorbed in your femininity
they told me lie after lie of your proximity to god
to all that is love
to all that is divinity

i am so tired of you palestine
the lies i was told in line
after poetic line
the gossip you promoted with such impunity
about green lands of delicious fantasy
where soil exploded not in craters of fire
but into food for hungry bellies
miracles daily
rumors of your continuous gaiety
your exquisite brown-eyed children
limbs embracing the sun
flinging hearts in abandon
throwing not rocks
but glances of joy
free
careless
not one blue and white striped wolf in the vicinity

oh palestine, how they crafted you
spun stories to douse your
demise with pantomimes
acted out for our entertainment, our pop corn
fiesta oblivious while they
hid your unlawful
ungodly captivity
the bloodshed
shed hourly
on your scene of nativity
i am so tired of you Palestine,
i am so tired of your master capturers
and their den of global iniquity

for every growing luminous tree
witnessed in my imagined dreams of you
you offered a corpse at dawn

for every child free
i could have blossomed forth
you offered me curses
hate filled chants of infertility
where arms should have held in brown amber
strength in male beauty
in compassion
humility
where i saw courage in men
i loved from villages burnt
from refugee camps filled plenty
from camps ravaged
second time empty
i yearned for kindred tender masculinity
a traveler of your journey
palestine
and you offered betrayal
at best
at the most you offered
heartless frigidity
and I am so tired of learning you falasteen,
i am tired of spelling your name differently
of pronouncing Arabic in accents all jumbled
of not speaking your language properly
of trying to locate your borders
my own checkpoints caged
my roads home a maze
i am done chasing useless positivity
there is none of you left for me
to blend in with my genetic chemistry
you denied me a birth
a nationality
you will not sow my death as your own
as proof of your star spangled virility.

no, no ya falasteen,
how they have made even your name
a profanity
i am so tired falasteen,
tired of knowing you superficially
never unearthing your mystery
in our affair of clenched hearts
and insanity
your mountains, illusions of smoke
your breezes, a fog of rancid heavy density
they have warped you my love
they have you reborn
an atrocity.
a genetic mutation
of defective
machinery of monstrosity

i am tired of your mood swings
hammering on my heart strings
tired of inner conflicts crushing your people
dumb appeals to a barren
united nations of inanity

no one loves you anymore falasteen
your streets a collection of fables
with morals about their depravity
your homes a battle ground
for savages to assert their
flawed identity
for savages to rip apart
our selfishness
our weaknesses
our cowardice, you fucking Arabs
our lack of tenacity

no one loves you,
no one ya falasteen
maybe not even me

i am tired of you
palestine,
i cannot even commit you to a dumpsite
of memory
a past buried in private graveyards
i cannot string words to honor you with at least a eulogy.
i cannot say how we feel about you,
you
a child
a parent
rival, friend, enemy
a load, a burden
a neighbor, a lover
a fruit tree you are palestine
decaying at the root of every heart-broken split apart family.
i am so tired of living with you
of your life inside me
invisibly
the articles of your wardrobe
replete with beads of suffering
every day you dress me with terror
you feed me lunacy
and massacres
and tragedy
every evening you shed dead skin
you glow with soft caresses of lingering stubborn memory
i looked for a home
you bequeathed me vagabond stories
and where i thought to grow roots
to plant camaraderie
you flooded with steel, and six edged stars
of madness
of evil empires and their immortality
your marriage of tradition
ignorance
and greed has left us slumped in a bed
stains on our thighs
looking for remnants of our gang banged loss of virginity

oh palestine, you tire me
you offer the senses nothing to cling to anymore
in this sea of frailty…
you no longer exist on this map of injustice
the murder details of your million years
etched into a history
of life and ancestry
is now salon talk of
poor woman
isn't it so terrible
all these dead children
what to do what to do
smoke smoke drink drink breath choked
eyes extinguished in inferiority

the mass genocide of you falasteen
no longer news worthy of being obscene
has become silent hate festering
has become daily banality
at what point does one lose track of the dead?
do we stop counting?

oh palestine, your numbers tire me
our land gets smaller,
the graphs of settlers settling old scores
rising so healthy
such assurance indicated in figures
such growth rate
our fragility
their solidity
while you starve ya falasteen,
while you stumble begging
blind
limping
bordering on the edge of suicide
and its welcome finality

how do we laugh at life's cruelty?
what kind of practical joke are they, these Israelis?
i am so tired of your math palestine,
your losses and gain
full of pain
and added pain
till all i am is numb
all i witness but absurdity

i am so tired ya falasteen,
i am tired of loving you
and hating you
fundamentally
intrinsically
instinct ively
eternally