slams shut against our prayers for love

and peace, falls on the dirty sleeve hope

wipes across the kitchen counter.

Dark the heart

that betrays itself for greed, hips

grinding coins into satin sheets.

Dark the donkey who sings

at dawn, his grief penned isolate

in a desert wash coyotes run

carrying the empty satchels of their thirst.

Dark the silent limbs

of children amputated in another refugee camp

where their parents were guaranteed safe sleep.

Dark the silent limbs

of eucalyptus hanging as motionless

as mothers with no windows, no closet, no

kitchen, not even a tent to hide in

waiting for the next missile strike.

It never ends.

It never ends.

Towhee wakes to the east, whistles up sweet

mango light defining far desert peaks.

We are tied by rock and heat. Tied east

where daily bombs shatter streets

in a desert choking on phosphorous smoke, on dust, on splintered bone.

Where families like our families wake

to blood-smeared neighbors

buried under cinderblock rubble.

Do you hear the young man wail

in Arabic over the crushed corpse of his bride

cradling the corspe of his three day old daughter?

Endlessly he would scroll through his phone for photos

if his cell wasn’t blown to metal confetti.

Dark the eye of the cloudless Gaza sky split

by a year of drones buzzing revenge, dark

the flattened cratered cities, olive trees smashed

by the righteous fists of men

whose lies are scribbled in blood tithes

the same color as their own.