POPULAR UPRISINGS

"I, a girl, am going down to Tahrir Square and I will stand alone.
and I’ll hold up a banner, perhaps people will show some honor . . .”
                                           - Asmaa Mahfouz, 26-year-old

if you see something, say something

i saw children making a snowman, and from the gutters
long icicles melting under mid-winter sun, but i heard
something too: when the electric lights were off
and the night was dark -- cello music in a foreign film

as dawn flat-broke, i only heard about it but my skin
tingled -- a Tunisian man's self-immolation sparking
the Middle East and Africa . . . Egypt, waving a banner,
a flame that has never gone out, waving in Alexandria,
Mahalla, Mansoura, Damietta, Port Said, waving in Ismailia,
Suez, Luxor, and on to Yemen, Algeria, Sudan, Jordan,
Iraq . . .

if you know something, do something

in Tahrir Square, the Square of Liberation,
the People dancing, and tasting bread . . .
and bandaging each other . . .
wrapping themselves in blankets and sleeping in tents
or shelters of plywood . . .

"Those kids in Tahrir Square know their history and have
seen three hundred of their finest shed their blood for freedom."
                                            - Ahmed Amr, editor NileMedia.com

if you see something, do something

the People cleaned the streets of trash
the warplanes and helicopters, the ammunition,
rubber bullets, police sticks, tear gas and
water cannons would not stop them,
would not stop the People -- the children,
the unemployed, striking workers, professors,
doctors, lawyers and trade unions, Christians and Muslims . . .

“A threshold of fear has been crossed. For what has happened
in both countries is that the structures of a police state have
been challenged and found, to the surprise of many, to be
weaker than imagined.”
                                       - Peter Beaumont, British journalist

if you listen, say something

leave the labels on the shelf, let human rights prevail,
leave the war budgets on the desk, leave the crackdowns
and torture, the thuggery and thievery for some ancient
history book, let the People breathe the free air . . .

this is about
reality awakening
popular uprisings

in many places
voices rising as one

Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is a frequent guest poet and essayist on Axis of Logic. He is a writer, small press publisher, and Turtle Islander. You can contact him via his literary website.

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