Where next burns the fire

Dedicated to Aaron Bushnell

Where next burns the fire

That burns, like desire, in the heart

And raised fist, as embers?


Where does the man who made his life a selfless spark

Survive, but for us, who choose to remember?

We remember, and

Raise burning fists

Above burning hearts –

His fire is in our hands and souls,

Long may we stand, and may our rage roll

Wildly through the narrow streets then, bloodied,

Swear our last breath against the vicious toll

Of fire’s dead,

And of the warhead's banshee call.


He died heavier than mountains,

Harder too, and we who live now owe it through

The ageless years and burning stars to pass along

His name to those who fight, when we are gone.

His name, and many tens of thousands more,

All the dead of this hateful war –

Not a war, a genocide.

We all see the gutless cowards hide

Behind a definition or percent:

“Israel has a right to self-defense,”

Then build a fence and bomb inside.


We have all gone mad with pain,

Pain of grief like open flame,

Drowned by no rain of metal death,

Just life in the entrails of this beast.

Now a voice is raised over the waste,

That, unyielding yet desperate,

Screaming “Free Palestine!”

No more of us, here or there, have to die.

I wish so badly to see a thousand fires rise,

Not in our hides, in our souls!

And in our hands,

To burn across all stolen lands

And dare to make the colonial minds a pyre –

Then ask again,

Where next burns the fire?


check out Twm’s book “BAEDD AND OTHER POEMS


Twm Gwynne

Twm Gwynne is a queer animist, anarchist, organiser, gardener, and poet of mixed Welsh, Irish, and English descent living on Te Ika-a-Māui, Aotearoa. Their poetry has been featured in several journals including A Beautiful Resistance and Clarion, as well as the collection Flower Bombs: Poems of Love and Rage in the Anthropocene. A short collection of their work titled Baedd & Other Poems is available though the Ritona imprint of Gods & Radicals Press.

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At Midnight [Poetry]