Omayma Khayat
Drawing A Line Across Our Map
You draw your line across the map
tearing countries and cities into segments
too many to count
penetrating mountains and valleys
tumbling scrap to the ground
with your invisible red line
you create clefts in landscapes
while mutilating languages and religions
peoples and cultures into fragments
defining each section in an ideology of blood
We are just dust particles,
remains from a destruction
curated by the hands of your war gods
and like a flame extinguished by a passing wind
sacred places become obsolete
forgotten
hearts become numb
blackened by the disguise
your eyes see only monetary gain and power
while ours see the deceit lying in the midst
of reasoning and logic
too profound for our
backwards and primitive minds to comprehend
You draw your line across the map
Intersecting
Clashing
Dissecting
as if humans from another world
are yours for the taking
are pieces of flesh
that deserve nothing more
than to be placed on metal slabs
and studied
cut into
researched
for the greater of mankind
for the greater good
all the while you make the world
believe that you are
the lesser of the two evils
You draw that line with an unshaken nerve
creating battlefields of rubble
where ancient towns
which existed far before your very existence
crumble into a drunkenness
atop of people who have become nothing
lost in this world with no fate
or culture
no purpose or name
faithless beings
believing in a faith you simply
do not care to truly understand
undermining all the good
for your own faith, that of which is deep rooted
in currency and ignorance
blood and oil
all to remain in power
You draw your invisible line
That line made of red from lacerated bodies of
“Collateral damage”
use that red line to define who we are
you are
they are
comparing and contrasting
placing into columns of superior over inferior
dividing us by the colors of our skin
the language of our tongues
the beliefs in our hearts
And you,
you use those differences
to show the world how wrong we are
and how right you are
and you create fractions of groups
that do your bidding
so your hands seem empty and clean
and your lands seem free and just
yet reality knows no bounds
and the strings being pulled have become frayed
and visible
like your ignorance
like your deceit
yet you draw that line
that invisible line
As you propel
that dagger
deeper
right into our hearts.
Omayma Khayat is an emerging poet living in Brooklyn. She describes herself this way: A Sunday or Transit Poet, I write when I find a few minutes that I can steal away. It could be on a park bench while I watch my child play, on the morning/evening commute on our mostly untrusted and unreliable public transportation system, or late into the night when I should be asleep. Since I am too busy being a mom and working on my career as a project manager in the printing industry, I currently haven’t had any books published, any poems accepted into journals or anthologies (well maybe one). And I’m OK with that—My poetry is meant to be read or heard and I’ve found venues where that is accepted without having a “published” identity—yet.
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