To Exist Is to Resist

In my mind

I’ve freed Palestine

Envisioned a dream

That just needs to be seen

Olive trees and fields of figs

Orange groves

That lead to our roads

No blocks filled with cops

No ten-year-olds shot

Freedom

Is what I got

I understand my grandmother’s plan

To live on her bought and paid-for land

And though it isn’t in her hands

It remains in her heart

Every time another is killed

We go back to the start

1948: the date you make us remember

The star and scars of David

And we’re the ones who’ve hated?

We’ve been raped and berated

By bullets and forced “immigration”

Squatting and settling

Left wrestling with the best Zionism has to offer

While the US fills its coffers

We’re seen as monsters

Our people blow up in pain

Black-eyed and half-insane

Wouldn’t you be?

If an Israeli bullet penetrated your child’s brain?

I envision Palestine in my mind

With the “chosen” frozen in time

To realize their morality’s blind

To take back generations of crime

And put an end to Apartheid

How many kids sit and wish

They could be labeled other than a terrorist

To exist is to resist!

Reads the graffiti in their cities

Give them chalk instead of rocks

They’ll use the blackboards

If you let them go to school

Give them chalk instead of rocks

Instead you bulldoze the block

Destroy their homes

Palestine is what you call the “no building zone”

But you can’t bulldoze our minds

Every time we’ll rise through ashes

Like Cassius Clay

We’ll bob and weave for infinity

There is no divinity

In bombing our cities

Setting up committees to treat us differently

We’re from Falasteen

The land where dreams are made

So just remember one thing

One day the bells of freedom will ring

And you’ll see me smiling

Loving life in Palestine


Remi Kanazi is a Palestinian American poet and activist.  He is editor of Poets for Palestine.  Visit his Web site Poetic Injustice at <www.poeticinjustice.net/>.
  The video shows Kanazi reciting “To Exist Is to Resist” at the 3 January 2009 Gaza Massacre protest in New York City.