Shared with W3 #175 – imagery.
Hopefully, the idea behind this poem will end up completely lost in time.
Foundation Myth – 6th September 2025
Tag: Palestine
Villages, glimmer golden
No Remains – 30th July 2025
There will be no Anne Frank
of Palestine,
she has been murdered ten
thousand times;
A life shortened to the point it
never existed,
all memories erased, a family
without trace;
Small diaries buried in white
without ceremony,
buried from the shores and buried to
the banks;
No history to remain of a
girl hiding,
no attic to remain, there are
no spaces;
All humanity removed, monsters
ruling monsters.
Livestream – 24th June 2025
I.
Join us at eight pm. Going live!
II.
Screens soon flicker, fighting against the algorithm.
III.
It’s the feel-good story of today!
IV.
Rounding up the starving with generous aid.
V.
Machine guns rattle into the gathered crowds.
VI.
No mercy, no humanity – we’re livestreaming genocide.
VII.
Broadcast ends at nine pm. Gone dead.
Format inspired by this post by Nilofer Neubert – 7 lines of 7 words.
Sympathies – 16th June 2025
I neither cared for you one way or the other,
your virtues and character were unknown;
Ambivalently sympathetic to your suffering
after all the horrible things I’d been shown;
But slowly you were revealed by yourself
to be equally similar devils in disguise;
Impossible to be unaware of the irony
of your actions and repeated ridiculous lies;
And if you were not hated before this
you are now surely bound to be;
To inflict a holocaust for any reason
removes all goodwill and previous sympathy;
There are those who still sit complicit
in their silence, they are justifying;
As if their own fingers pulled the trigger
and, not so quietly, cause all those dying;
What goes around will again come around,
this is the beginning of your own demise;
With no moral high ground to stand upon
there’ll be no one left to sympathise.
Habibi Was – 4th June 2025
Frustrated at every turn,
Invisible lines not to be crossed,
Random security searches,
Only finding all liberties lost;
Or checkpoints to clock in,
To be grateful for a shekel or two,
A home is not a home,
When one’s life becomes taboo;
Constant eyes are trained,
Machine guns held at the ready,
Deliberate provocations,
Ensure all balance remains unsteady;
So Habibi threw a stone,
A piece of protest found underfoot,
A frustrated release,
That was so ineloquently put;
It bounced off the tank,
Where no one was hurt by this token,
For this, he got a bullet in the head,
And another family heartbroken.
The title is a play on the Bob Marley song ‘Johnny Was’
You Can’t Wash It Away – 2nd March 2025
Shared with dVerse Tuesday Poetics: The Four Elements – my chosen element being earth.
The blood spills to dampen the desert;
a dusted red mochi forms.
These plains become a fertile crescent
once more.
The storm forms, a raining of boots;
Mud made men without meaning – cold earth
enveloped those troops.
A coward hides to snipe;
pap, put, pup – he spits.
Thunderfire singes the old roots
before boats rise from underground;
where seeds now drown
in the red-rushed dirt of oblivion
The bones of the buried found
haunt forever those lost in the victory
amongst the deadly bloom together
Bombs And Bread – 23rd December 2024
Can you name even one of the dead?
Whilst dropping both bombs and bread
You defend these actions instead
And defiantly nodding your head
But killing kids is not self-defence
Spreading peace through violence
This is no place for indifference
This is no time for your silence
Since when has questioning charred corpses
Been more offensive than actual charred corpses?
Today I’m feeling:
Tired and dizzy, especially after exercise. I didn’t sleep well last night and woke up tired. At school now and feel a little out of it.
Amy woke up coughing and saying she is sick, so perhaps I have something coming on, too.
I felt a bit more with it by the afternoon but also with a blocked nose. I’m looking forward to getting home.
Health:
Physical: 7
Mental: 7
Today I’m grateful for:
Amy’s idea of getting mala for dinner in an effort to blow away any potential lurgy. Not sure if it will work but it was deliciously hot and spicy anyway.
The best thing about today was:
There’s a good feeling around school as next week is a holiday. Students are happy and playful and don’t seem to mind doing some work too.
What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?
Watching George turn up an hour late to his class today. Most of his students had already disappeared by then anyway.
It is annoying to watch but I’m trying to put it out of my mind.
Christmas In Gaza – 18th December 2024
Love and peace to all men
Your silent night, broken again
Tidings of comfort and joy
Burst wide open as bombs deploy
A Christmas, warm and bright
Lit by a white phosphorus light
Celebrating the birth of hope
Where none is found under microscope
The platitudes of seasonal cheer
Have lost all their meaning here
Peace unto you, my brother
“All I want for Christmas is my mother”
Shared with Poets and Storytellers United – holiday anxieties
Today I’m feeling:
Good, once I got moving. Since a recent iPhone update, my alarm only seems to vibrate, no light and no volume. Usually, it’s enough to wake me but this morning Amy heard it vibrating and wearily shouted at me to get up! I guess I was tired!
As I’d been waking up before my alarm for the last week or so, my brain was probably thinking that it couldn’t be time to get up yet.
Some tough exercise this morning and in my half awake state I struggled keeping my balance at times. The positive effects from it have carried me through, though and I feel good.
Health:
Physical: 8
Mental: 8
Today I’m grateful for:
Dutchie sending me the photos that I asked him for, which he took this morning. As we were waiting for the flag ceremony, we were talking about fashion, and Achang showed up wearing a denim jacket. I told them that denim jackets are kind of a 70s/80s style for me and not really in fashion.
I asked him if I could try it on and he let me whilst Dutchie took some pictures. I said that it’s a little too big for Achang and he told me that it actually belongs to his sister.
I thought I looked quite good in it.
The best thing about today was:
Soldiering through a slow workday, where only having to work three hours feels quite tiring, as there is too much downtime. I managed to stick it out until clock-out time by sitting in the cafe. I saw lots of my students walk by outside and Noah was excited to tell me that she and Lin have been chosen to help with the visiting overseas students next month.
What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?
Recently, I have been less interested in reading poetry. I think I have been overwhelmed with so much to read on prompt blogs and it’s burned me out. It always feels like a chore to analyse someone else’s work in the hope that they return the favour. It’s the ‘like-for-like’ mentality of social media.
Of course, I want my work to be noticed. I think some of it is good and worthy. But to trawl through another 40 poems about the seasons or the moon is a burden I’m getting tired of.
I need to refine my search a bit and perhaps find new places to submit my work where it might get some more exposure. Looking around, though, there are a million poets of all shapes and flavours, all looking for the same thing. I’ll just keep on writing anyway and do appreciate the people who do take the time and interest to read and respond.
Something I learned today?
In an odd coincidence, whilst I was talking with my grade 12s today, Alyn hung up a phone call from a name I recognised as a Facebook friend of mine but I had recently been wondering who it was, as they were using a different name.
She told me that it was her brother and that made me even more curious. It turns out that her brother is my old grade 9 student Achang!
Review your acts, Good and bad.
I received a message back from Anchan this morning, just stating that she is unhappy and I wasn’t really able to offer her any consolation. I reminded her that she told me that her aunt was coming in the next couple of days and that she was hoping for things to get better. I haven’t heard back again, though.
Watermelon – 13th December 2024
The fertile soils know nothing of humanity
As it is tilled into dust
Masses of molecules, ambivalent
To all the partitions discussed
Oblivious to gods, watermelons grow
In amongst the shouts
The squawks of the barbarian
Echo along the valley of doubts
Bring another flood to wash clean
The fields of blood
Plant the watermelon seeds
In this god-forsaken mud
Never mind the river or the sea
There’s no mountain owned
All the king’s horses and men
Will see the kings dethroned
Today I’m feeling:
Pretty good, waking before my alarm again, though I did sleep earlier last night too. The BetterMe exercises are really getting me going in the morning, along with a cold start shower afterwards, meaning I step under the shower and turn on the tap to get about 15 seconds of cold water before it warms up.
It has finally gotten cold enough to not have aircon at night but I still have the fan on at the moment.
Health:
Physical: 8
Mental: 8
Today I’m grateful for:
Whoever makes the cookies that they sell at Le Paradis. I just have to control myself from buying them every day!
The best thing about today was:
My last class of the day with the grade 11 Hospitality students and J-Biz students. It was a light-hearted, fun class about Japanese culture, in keeping with the theme of the week.
What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?
I had to deduct points from more than half of my grade 8 students for not doing their work for me yesterday and it made me decide that I need to deal with them a little differently.
Today, I immediately graded all their work in front of the whole class. Not in a vindictive manner, but in a way that they can immediately see the outcome of what they do, or lack thereof.
Something I learned today?
I randomly came across an album online that had a picture of the artists on the cover and one was almost the spitting image of Hayden, from the facial hair to the cap and clothes. I sent him the picture and he laughed about it too.
Review your acts, Good and bad.
Nomsen absent-mindedly left her iPad behind in the classroom, so I picked it up for her to keep safe. A few minutes later, she called me and I told her that I had sold it at the market for 10 baht.
She laughed and soon came back to get it, looking a little sheepish. She was appreciative of my taking care of her but also acknowledged that she had just had ten points deducted in SchoolBright due to her not doing any work for me yesterday.
Screaming Seagulls – 28th November 2024
I lost my mother
When the screaming seagulls fell
Our house now a mausoleum
–
Rebuilding a life
A family of my own
Will be my only revenge
This mondo shared with #TankaTuesday Poetry Challenge: Silver Linings. Image found at Palestine Will Be Free Substack
6th Dec 2025 – Shared with Poets and Storytellers United #206 – everybody scream
Today I’m feeling:
Surprisingly good. I slept ok until my dream, which was disembarking from an airplane and then searching for a bathroom and never managing to find one.
I was approaching consciousness and wondering what time it was and whether to get up to pee. I decided to look at my phone and it was only 4 minutes until my alarm, so I got up and took advantage of the extra few minutes with my exercise and hanging.
Health:
Physical: 7
Mental: 7
Today I’m grateful for:
An unexpected windfall.
Last year, sick of my student Kwang never having a working phone when I was constantly having students utilise their phones in class, I brought in my old Samsung for her to use. To be honest, I never really expected it to come back, knowing what Kwang is like.
At the end of last semester, I kept asking her to bring the phone back but she always had some excuse about it. I asked Kru Karn to ask her parents and grandparents about it too, but all to no avail.
Due to her poor performance in school, Kwang was due to switch schools for this semester but needed all the paperwork sorted at our school first. Kru Karn used my phone as a hold over her being able to go to a new school, asking her to either return the phone or pay for it. I have no idea how much it was worth and just came up with 6000 baht off the top of my head.
Kwang’s mum asked for a discount to 5000 baht, to which I readily agreed, still not expecting anything to come of it, but this morning suddenly, I was 5000 baht richer!
I have no idea what ever happened to the phone, my guess is that either Kwang or her mum sold it already, maybe for more than I was asking. I don’t care, it doesn’t matter.
I liked Kwang, though she was obviously fucked up by her family situation. She has chosen a path that I tried to steer her away from but I hope that one day she will be mature enough to figure her way back, as she is smart, too.
As I told Kru Karn, I tried my best for her.
The best thing about today was:
Coming across a great lesson for my grade 8 classes today. It started with writing out a simple text with some highlighted words and those words they had to translate. This is usually the first two parts of a reading class that I will do, usually followed by asking them to read for me and answer some comprehension questions.
As this was a very simple text and they had seen it before with Kru NumNim last semester, I thought to try something different.
They had 11 highlighted words or phrases, which they could understand because they had already translated them. Then I asked them to write a sentence for each word but, the first sentence must be three words long, the second sentence four words long and so on.
This task got everyone settled down into figuring out proper sentences with this restriction. I advised them that they could use Google Translate (or ChatGPT) to help but some had a go at it by themselves.
As a follow-up to this, I will take their phones from them tomorrow and ask them to do the task again.
These two classes are usually stressful for me but this lesson really worked well. These kinds of lessons come along every now and then and I think I have to utilise the idea a few more times in the semester.
What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?
I strained my lower back a little bit today but it was my own fault. In my morning exercise, I did Swimmer-Superman, which engages the lower back and the strain feels nice.
In the afternoon, I wandered into monkey Sarah’s class and she came and played with me. To playfully punish her, I picked her up around the waist and turned her upside down. She screamed and laughed and I let her down again.
A few minutes later, I felt a twinge in my lower back. I asked her how much she weighed, as she is pretty skinny and probably not even 5 feet tall. She said that she was 48kg, which is more than some of her friends who are taller than her.
Anyway, I will be more careful about who I pick up and play with next time!
Something I learned today?
(See above!)
1994ever 