The show must go on even as the ghetto rages in flame.

Last week the founder of the Jenin Freedom Theater, Mer Khamis was murdered outside the theater. Another sad day in an ever saddening situation between Israel and Palestine. This poem is in memorial to him.

The show must go on even as the ghetto rages in flame.

A cold blooded murder
in the heated sand strewn streets of
Jenin
An execution in front of the affirming doors
of the Freedom Theater.

God was a blind eyed nonpaying
Member of the audience that day,
Seemingly a critic of his own creation,
It was said that he left after the first
and only act,
Which portrayed the slaying of
a proud man
who had breathed
and now bled,
struggling through a divided life
with only one want
one artistic vision
to produce peace upon a ghetto stage.

By pursuing freedom,
through
the release of creation,
the liberation of performance
the safety and sanity of the theater
as a relief from the chaos
and out of control insanity
of the daily drama portrayed
beyond the theater doors.

Bullet holes lashed his body
Like misplaced dialogue that
Had lost control its tongue.
His body heaved and sighed
a last bow
a creators struggled final breath
as violence conducted
its very own curtain call.

And like so many biblical images
of rivers,
The murderer ran away, red
Through raped streets filled with chaos and shame
Through scarred slums where creation cries
Itself to sleep each night
and where passion is seen as a pariah
by the political fanatics
And the occupying state.

The artist’s body ruined sagged
and slumped over in the auto, dead.
A man finally free from dogma,
slain at the footsteps
of the foundation
of his very own hopes and dreams.

What was once a place established
for a frustrated forgotten people
to pursue peace through portrayal
was now where mayhem
had become the main attraction
on the marquee
standing dead center stage
a theater of pain,
where the creators heart will always be present
but the houselights will never
shine so bright again.


thanks to Poetry 24 blogsite for first publishing this poem. http://poetry-24.blogspot.com/