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The fear of someone who comes to Palestine for the first time
For writer Huu Uoc

You can’t know
Behind the iron fence at the border
With the gun barrels
Looking out from the guard station
Is what waiting for you

All the paperwork would not ease your anxiety
All the promises are no use
When they want to pull you out of
The room full of fearful darkness

Finally you come
Stand on the land
Full of fear
As if the first time
You see the clouds flowing
As if the first time
You see the flowers bloom
As if the first time
You catch the eyes
Looking at you with friendliness
And see the smile
As if someone
Turn on the light
In the dark

But on the flight back home
Instead of fear
Of where you just left
Is the fear
Of where you’re going.

The sea fish dish

The waiter
Brought out our dinner
The sea fish dish

He choked up
- This is the fish we import
From our own sea

After what he said
I looked at the fish’s eyes
Was it crying
Or was it just the grape sauce
The cook poured on it earlier

But then I heard
The words of the fish
Groaning the sound of the ocean
- Sir
I am a fish
Who is lucky
To come back to die
On the land of my ancestors

Please don’t hesitate
Pick up your fork and knife
Have a good meal
With my last luck.

The key

There is a door
On the house across the street
Always close
And I have waited
Someday someone would open it

Then I realized that house
No one lives there
Wild grass has taken over the sidewalk
The darkness filled the key hole

But last night
I heard noises
I thought someone opened the door
But no
It was just a cat
Came back for his owner
Starched on the door

I looked up in the sky
With a question
But I only saw the clouds
Silently flowing in the night
Carrying the keys.

In the shade of the Holy tree

The place Jesus used to preach
The place where the souls were saved
Where even each stone
Was enlightened
Like a shower in morning sunlight

And in the past 2000 years
Sometimes he comes back
Sits under a tree
Alone in the night
His heart bring on the memories
And the memories haunt him

More than 2000 years ago
Someone betrayed him
Sold him for 30 pieces of silver

Now I come here
I see many people
Selling postcard
With pictures of him preaching
For only a dollar.

The road by the mountain

The barren mountains
Go all the way to the horizon
And a lonely road
Where Jesus used to walk

I stood here looking at the road
No one in sight
Only a lost sheep
Destressing cry
In the sunset.

In front of the wailing wall

That is not the wailing wall
In Jerusalem
But in a museum
Poet Mahmoud Darwish
Who wrote nightly the bleeding poems
About his lost hometown

Let’s put our ears on the wall
You will hear
The painful cry
The sorrowful scream
Of the Palestinian
In prison
In their own hometown

Day by day the believers
Come in front of the wailing wall
Of Jerusalem
To ask for a blessing
While I come in front of a wall
In a poet’s museum
To hear the painful cries
Of the soul who lost their Freedom.

Buying swimwear in Palestine

They stepped into a store
Choosing swimwear
The blue swimsuit
With sparking gold fish printed on

They dreamed of swimming in the Dead Sea
Underneath the endless sky
They wanted to turn into fish
To stir up the silent ocean

But the barbed wire fence
Across the road to the beach
And a warning sign
Hand-written
Of the Reaper

The fish on the swimsuit
Were out of breath from their gills
In the sad eyes
Of the women

They came back from the Dead Sea
And swam every night in their dreams
Full of big waves
Groaning the sound of Freedom.

The face of Mother Mary

Someone exclaimed
“Mother Mary appear!”

At a guard station
Israeli girls
With the face of Mother
Wore the soldier uniforms
Bullet-proof vests underneath
Held on tight to the guns

There were no patch of grass to be found
On the endless mountains
In the dark alleyways
Could not find the face of Mother Mary
Looking down at baby Jesus
Only saw the eyes
Of the beautiful girls
Scanning the passports
And visas
And the completely black eye
Of the gun barrel
Looked straight at me

But they were very, very beautiful girls
And behind them, very far away
I saw the men
Smoking cigars
And signing a document.

Dream interpretation

Suddenly a sound in the night
Woke me up
Ramallah at 2 in the morning
I am far away from my home

Was that a gun sound?
Was someone groping in the dark
At the hotel’s reception
And knocked down a glass vase?
Did someone slip on the stairs?
Did someone kick the door?
Was it just a nightmare?

I opened the window to look down on the street
A truck covered in tarp
Ran by
And disappeared into the dark

Right then on the balcony
Of the house across the street
The black dog was still barking
For 100 years.

Written under the Temptation mountain

Rise from ourselves
Mountains of temptation

We are the ones who are lost
Within our own darkness of bodies
An animal with our names
With a self-made resume just like ours
In the file cabinet of the organization
Sometimes are sealed and stamped
And it eats our soul piece by piece
Until our bodies decompose

We were born
And grow a little each day
The mountain of temptation gets taller
We know that
And walk about it
But we still cheer with pleasure
When we let the animal with our names
Eat the pieces of our dead soul

And there, the mountain of temptation
I see the endless line of people
From all over looking for this place
Travelers, tourists
Even priests
And many climb over the mountain
But can’t climb over their own bodies.