Lebanon Kills
Lebanon kills our conscience every single day,
as we carry on with our mundane plans
to further petty bourgeois career paths as usual.
She compels our ability to reason with truths,
as we carry on with our
CNN
and BBC
and New York Times.
She questions our faith in human good,
as we rationalize
that it is human nature to sustain warfare.
Lebanon summons our trusts in our own potential to rise up,
to look into our comfortable shining mirrors on the walls,
and discover how unabashedly wretched we must look
if we smile to ourselves today.
Lebanon puts on trial all that is beautiful,
all that is innocent,
all that is glorious,
all that is humane,
all that is kind,
all that is generous,
all that we mean by understanding for social good.
Yes, Lebanon defies, when she bleeds.
Lebanon exposes our sense of empathy
when children of Beirut
are massacred in name of
democracy.
Lebanon unearths our feelings of cooperation
when we indifferently watch
hapless humans murdered in name of
freedom.
Lebanon kills our pride in our identities
as we stoically listen to
blatant propaganda against Islam
Offers a mirror to display our amicability
the moment we buy into
media definition of terrorism.
Lebanon jostles our cognition
when we start believing
that there ever was a
kidnapping of soldiers.
That such kidnapping
has anything to do with the war
against humanity.
And, Lebanon resists, even as it bleeds.
When we overlook Israel
as one of the biggest militarist regions
on the planet,
Lebanon resists.
Lebanon mocks our intelligence
when we start assuming
a national defense establishment
is protector of anything human,
be it the armed forces of India,
America,
Pakistan,
or Israel.
Lebanon demolishes our sense of proportion
when we mistake the grieving
agonized -
and the affected
the terrorists.
Lebanon thwarts our basic values of decency
when we have anger
at the defenseless
and support
for Abu Gharibs.
Because we think
the Iraqi prisoners
were terrorists
and invading military rapists
victors,
Lebanon defies
And educates our children
and their children
and theirs,
because we have taught them the history
invented by
Rupert Murdoch,
not history
narrated by
Howard Zinn.
Lebanon wakes our ancestors up,
and their ancestors
and theirs,
because they did not teach us
not to discriminate people
or to disown gods,
and Lebanon makes us regret,
because we have still not learnt enough.
Yes Lebanon kills our joys, when it bleeds.
When the so-called world leaders call
their lavishly delicious meetings
and use profanities
to address the suffering people,
Lebanon bleeds.
When the leaders perpetrate military race
by aiding imperialist quests,
Lebanon grieves.
Lebanon kills our curiosity to know and grow,
when we conveniently ignore the fact
that Israeli citizens of the
lower classes are routinely arrested,
and tortured
without trial for indefinite periods,
by the ruling class
just as the fascists ever did
in the garb of freedom.
Lebanon kills our power to look beyond
when we do not think twice
even as Palestinians have been living under unethical
inhuman
military occupation since almost 60 years now,
without land,
without rights,
without hopes,
and any sense of belonging
in a land that rightfully belongs to them
and wrongfully occupied now.
When we do not pause
to think 60 years is a human lifespan,
Lebanon kills.
Yes Lebanon kills, when it bleeds.
We, the torchbearers of freedom
and trumpets of liberty
and voters of democracy
are fittingly comfortable
within our definition of these words
whereas using these words
we mandate our leaders
to go ravage millions of innocent women
and children
just because they do not want
our shallow words in their dictionary,
and that is why Lebanon kills.
We the killers of Edward Said
and annihilators of Mesopotamia civilization
are so proud of our conquering heritage
while leaving behind no history for “terrorist children”,
that Lebanon kills.
We visitors to mocking war memorials
and lying history museums
and readers of western civilizations
that validated slavery in name of gods
are so muted by our ignorance
that Lebanon kills.
We fanatic supporters of colonial
and imperial powers of Europe
that forced the Jews
and compelled the Arabs
and enslaved the Blacks
and looted the working men and women
of the entire world,
are so happy to be psychologically numb,
and its so sad
that Lebanon kills.
Lebanon kills that bliss
that refuses to acknowledge
that revolution is the prerogative of the landless
against the landgrabbers,
just as
reactionary military occupation
is the prerogative of
the religious-military-industrial nexus.
And to those of us
who side by the authorized militarists
and take them for agents of freedom,
Lebanon kills.
Lebanon kills us our comforts
when we start believing in nationalities
as ends to human aspirations,
not as temporary means
to solve the question of bread,
so temporary
that after bread,
land
and peace,
we should know no nations
in order to embrace the worldwide working class.
And worldwide working class
should know
no national boundaries
and ethnicities
and religions,
because these are tools of the oppressors,
if it must come together,
and many of us refuse to believe this,
and hence Lebanon kills.
Lebanon kills us our zeals
when we blindly lend our support
to the orchestrators of global terrorism
in order to divide and rule our world,
and install their undivided Empire
those who for six decades
now in the name of war
against Communism
and “terror”,
had been working
to in fact cause wars
against working class humanity
in Korea,
in Vietnam,
in China,
in Italy,
in Greece,
in the Philippines.
Also
in Albania,
in Eastern Europe,
in Iran,
in Guatemala,
in Costa Rica,
in Syria,
in the Middle East,
in Indonesia,
in British Guiana,
in Soviet Union,
in Cambodia,
in Laos,
in Haiti,
in Algeria,
in Ecuador,
in The Congo,
in Brazil,
in Peru,
in Dominican Republic,
in Cuba,
when the militarist combines assault societies
and bombard, destabilize
in name of promoting
and exporting “democracy”,
and yet we applaud their victories,
Lebanon kills.
Despite their illegal interventions
also
in Ghana,
in Uruguay,
in Chile,
in Bolivia,
in Iraq,
in Australia,
in Angola,
in Zaire,
in Jamaica,
in Seychelles,
in Grenada,
in Morocco,
in Suriname,
in Libya,
in Nicaragua,
in Panama,
in Bulgaria,
in Afghanistan,
in El Salvador
and now
against the American working class,
we keep silent
and worship their billionaires
and deride the working class communities
of immigrants
and Blacks
and the Muslims,
it really sucks;
because Lebanon kills.
Lebanon kills when it bleeds,
because through our callous indifference,
and our reactionary supports
to the national defense forces
that thrives on the military industrial complexes
owned by a handful of global capitalists,
we have allowed the free rein
to exploit the indigenous,
the poor,
the working class people
by infusing in us
vast sea of ignorance
so that we would not challenge
the structure.
In fact
Lebanon kills
our claims as rational beings
as we so submissively let our minds
be colonized yet again,
by raising toast to their victory,
by worshipping their gods,
by using their profanities,
by playing by their rules,
by spreading their hatred
among ourselves
in the name of their religions,
their moral standards
and their male supremacist,
heterosexist,
individualistic,
self centered,
nationalistic,
oppressive,
religious,
capitalistic,
god-fearing,
inhumane
corporate orders.
Lebanon kills
because we live comfortably
in our racist,
anti-Islam
anticommunist
antiimmigrant
world of lies,
and we let our world leaders
orchestrate occasions,
deliberately neglect law and order,
and find reasons
to commit genocide
of innocent people
in months of
September
and July
and rest of the year,
in London,
New York
and Mumbai
and rest of the cities,
so that
they can carry on their own agendas
to conquer country after country,
oil fields after oil fields,
economies after economies,
peoples cooperatives after peoples cooperatives,
tribal lands after tribal lands,
indigenous peoples after indigenous people,
forests after forests,
and in fact declare our world as theirs,
as a capitalistic,
patriarchal,
conservative structure.
And hence Lebanon kills,
our complicity
so that
when we are no more,
our children will at least
have got rid of us all
and a ravaged Lebanon
will guide a new world,
full of hope
because all despairs are getting rid of now,
each moment
even as she bleeds.
– Saswat Pattanayak, Peoples’ Poet
Maryland, December 3, 2007
