Rafah
It’s Ramadan
A million people
Faithful
For what
I am unsure
Being not so faithful
For life
For rescue
For prophets to keep
Teaching
On the will of God
And to submit
While hospitals
Can’t work
And food cannot arrive
And there’s no living
Room
Or space for peace
There is an endless countdown
For invasion
Until the count is ended
With more shelling
And then many
Many troops
Darkened by masks
What passes for medieval armor
And bearing
Oh
So modern weapons
And in Israel
They wait as well
Still mourning
And some strategize
An ending to Hamas
While others
Simply want for life
After grief
To move them on
They want the desert
Want the mountains
Want the seaside
Want to work
And play
And love
Their way through life
The human way through life
Though there is fear
Of extinction
Here
Too small
Too new a country still
Against
How long were the reigns
Of kings
And queens
And prophets
Both sides
Have hellish prospects
Rooted
And growing
Though the blood and time
That has poured in
After seeds
Branches
That look like tension
More than fruit-bearing possibilities
Seasons
That lack distinction
Not from the wilderness
But from
What we’d say
The human heart
The mind
Both hardened
By reason
And by fright
By reasonable fright
And also anger
Anger at the other
Sometimes at one’s own
And where is life
In all this
Where do the walls come down
Enough
For work and play
The desert
And the mountains
And the shoreline
Of the ocean
To walk in
And look out toward
The horizon
Without a horizon
Blurred lines
But there the sun will set
As if the only clock at work
The moves
With assurance
Of the daytime
And the night time
And that’s all
C L Couch
Photo by nour tayeh on Unsplash
(x = space)
x
x
Crime
x
Someone
Went up to her,
Threw acid in her face
Then ran away
x
He is at large
To coin a phrase
x
Her contact lenses
Melted into her eyes
x
She’s nearly blind
x
She breathed the acid in
And cannot eat
Solid food
x
There is burned flesh
On her face
x
What kind of criminal
Would do this?
x
I don’t know
x
Was it because she is Muslim?
x
Hate crime
Is another phrase to coin,
Though as with things we repeat
And render trite,
There is meaning here
x
She cannot be the same
x
There is pain
x
There will be healing
And there will be healing
That can never happen
x
C L Couch
x
x
Nafiak Ikram and her mom were getting out of the car at their home when a man rushed up to her, threw a caustic liquid at her face and ran off.
Read the Latest
“My whole life changed in a matter of five minutes,” the Hofstra University student said in an interview with WCBS-TV. “We don’t realize what we have until it’s gone.”
“. . . what could I have possibly done to somebody?”
x
Photo by Vadim Sadovski on Unsplash
x
(drafted before an officer was shot
many times in Philadelphia, the
shooter claiming the cause was Islam)
Muslim Tribulation
We live to follow God,
to know the will of God
and continuously prepare
our lives so that we might
follow that sacred purpose
and intent.
There are religious
destroyers everywhere
in every tradition. But those of
us in unreasoned extremes—
these are sadly, specially alight
in the world just now.
We want peace. We believe
most do.
We want to be neighbors and
to welcome those into our
homes. But our hospitality is
challenged now of its
authenticity.
Do you want to be defined by
The remnant cause of woe?
Certainly, you don’t.
And neither do we.
We want our lives of faith
to delight our friends and
all those near us. Please
remember this.
We want to think
and believe
the best as well.
clcouch123 
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