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.