#Omar Sakr

[beguines]

Omar Sakr, The Lost Arabs

[firstfullmoon]

Omar Sakr, “Every Day”

[apoemaday]

Every Day

by Omar Sakr

Every day I say a prayer for Palestine And every day a dog runs away with it Vanishing down an alley, tail wagging To benefit who knows which wretch. I tell myself it doesn’t matter who receives The gift of my kindness. Such lovely lies We bestow upon ourselves. Sometimes I am the dog fleeing with a bastard’s Love clenched in my slavering jaw. Sometimes I am the one curled at the end Of an alley, blessed by the unexpected Warmth of a snuffling mouth telling Me I am not forgotten. Every day I say a prayer for Palestine.

[houseofpurplestars]

Refusal in the genocide by Omar Sakr

He walked to the gate

Accelerant in hand.

I can’t make this beautiful

I hope you understand.

His voice was clear.

He tried to light

The spark of his life

Several times.

I’m stuck on his fingers

On the catch

On the flash

On the free

On Falastin

Screaming

I don’t need a poem

I need a fire extinguisher

But oh god

Nothing can quench this light.

[geryone]

“A Song of Love” by Omar Sakr from We Call to the Eye & the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Heritage

[goreprofonde]

My father was for the longest time a plastic smile locked under the bed. Before that, he was whatever came out of my mother’s mouth. He was I’ll tell you when you’re older. He was winding smoke, a secret name. That fucking Turk. He was foreign word, distant country. I gave myself up to her hands which also fathered; they shaped me into flinch. Into hesitant crouch, expectant bruise. Into locked door, CIA black site- my body unknown and denied to any but the basest men. I said beat my father into me please, but he couldn’t be found. And when he was, I wished he remained lost. He blamed himself for the men I want.

- Omar Sakr, to be a son.

[llovelymoonn]

omar sakr son of sin

kofi

[artemisiatridentata]

Tweet by poet Omar Sakr, in response to a tweet about the WHO describing Al-Shifa Hospital as a “death zone”, as 25 heroic healthcare workers were trying to keep nearly 300 patients, including 32 babies, alive under horrific conditions.

Tweet reads: “I would once again like to invite you all to stop invoking history's judgement. We are alive and capable of condemning it now. We must do so with a clarity and conviction sufficient enough to bore into time—that's what *makes* history. Us. Now.”

[confusedbyinterface]

Guys good news if you have piss poor reading comprehension you can always get a job working for the Murdoch press!

[scatteredprayerbeads]

Posted by Omar Sakr on Dec 11, 2023

[gustaving]

[beguines]

Omar Sakr, Non-Essential Work

[firstfullmoon]

Omar Sakr, “On Finding the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in Dante’s Inferno,” in Non-Essential Work

[thoughtportal]

[edwordsmyth]

Omar Sakr

[a-queer-seminarian]

Poems of solidarity & love for Palestine

Palestine has been under siege for months now — and before that, it’s been subjected  to Israeli violence funded by Western nations for decades.

As the suffering continues, it can be tempting to shut down, to look away — but it is key to our own humanity, key to our solidarity with these fellow human beings, that we not look away; that we do not give up hope or stop speaking out.

Poetry can nourish us when we fear we might burn out. So in the coming days I’ll be sharing some poems centered around solidarity — poems to keep us going until Palestine is free.

Let’s start with a piece by Arab Australian poet Omar Sakr, who is not Palestinian but who has been using his platform and his art to stand with Palestine. Follow him on Twitter for the incredible poems he’s been posting there. This poem he posted in January challenges the idea of solidarity when it is watered down into a distant idea, rather than passionate, vulnerable love.

“Looking away in the genocide” by Omar Sakr

I have, too many times to count. There’s no anaesthetic left. Do you understand? Nothing To blunt the pain. I’m no hero, This isn’t brave, it’s a blank page My pen and blood. In my heart I have a stadium of dead children I swear it’s full every day yet Another is added. It isn’t the dead I look away from, it’s the debt Owed to the living, dragging down My eyelids, turning stay into flee Turning love into solidarity Something bearable, distant, a politic. I’m trying to see and not scream. Therein lies the problem.