You Cannot Live if You Bleed Out
By Dr. Mary Majayda

Gaza City, Kahn Younis,
Rafah, Beit Hanoun
and on goes the list
of towns being bled
a car full here,
a house full there,
one by one
to missiles
and sharpshooters
The blood is running
12 in an hour,
47 in 4 days,
blood is being let

Blood letting
an old fashioned term
expressing
the loss of life’s
necessary fluid
I could live
without tears
uncomfortable
and relief would be needed
but I’d survive
I could also live
without saliva
it jump starts the digestive process
and Moistens food for mastication
and swallowing
but I’d survive
without it

But Blood
life is in the blood
it carried oxygen
and nutrients for energy
and the code of who we are
without it
we are gone

The light of the eye goes out
thought ceases to process
the heart gives up trying
to pump what is not there
the lungs cease to fill and empty
in the process of oxygenating the blood
Feeling flees away
or ceases to exist

Without blood there is no life
you can not resuscitate a body
that has bled out
for with the blood life flows out
and soaks into the sand
and fills the world with the smell
of coppery blood and death
the smell of blood has a taste
like an old penny
you can taste it

Young and old alike
bleed out
In a place called Palestine
be it
an amputated limb
a perforated body
or even
one dismembered
you can smell and taste
the blood
the land cries out

The creator
told the first murderer
“His blood cries out”
if this is true
then Palestine cries out
for the thousands murdered
in that place
for the daily bath
in blood
poured out
hot,
and red,
and sticky

You can not live
if you bleed out
yet
Palestine hemorrhages
and
no one
seems to know a way
to stop the flow
Palestine lays
in her pool of blood
and no one
comes
to her aid