Welcome to the New Reservation

Welcome to the New Reservation
Where Palestinian is synonym
To American Indian
Where Gaza is a steri-strip
Slapped on a bullet wound

Where mortar shells smack-smack into bricks
And the people don't fit
Where the kettle is bound to boil over real soon

Where freedom is dying like buffalo in silence
While the future lives victim to the addiction of violence

Just how do you live in a city where you have to sell
The broken parts of your neighborhood
That have been repeatedly shelled
Bombed out and torn down
Where the word "building" is always a verb and never a noun...

Where schools and masjids are smoldering has-beens
Where the cityscape is scorched out stubble
And people buy food to eat by selling back the rubble?


Over here, the natives are given poker chips and beer
In Al Ghazzah, they only have rocks, slingshots
And their mothers' tears

Stuck like Old Testament Hebrews
In between Egypt and the Sea
Bricks mortered by the concrete of despair and misery

Neither neighbors nor the water provides any relief
Sabra and Shatilla are today's  Wounded Knee and Sand Creek, 

If we consult the past to see the future unfold
Then we aalready know Pandora's box holds very little hope

Life in the Strip stays is a sad ballad
Of tear gas canisters and full metal jackets,
Suicide runs, heavy retaliation, and
Adolescent martydom

Where Sons are taught to die young
Because War is the only thing left for them
to live for

They want jobs but not an occupation,

 Not looking for casinos or bucktooth  logos
In trade for their assimilation

So they try to sleep the sleep of giants
To dream the dreams of Philistines
Every fingertip is a wick, lighting
Hookah pipes and dynamite

The people pray for rain daily
To wash away the pain but
The only moisture they get comes from the
Rivers of sorrow

The same bitter water drank by Geronimo that made him become immortal

Do we remember the lessons that the Old Books taught?
Do they remember the ancient Gaza that Samson walked?

Do they see his hands pushing and pushing on the pillars, 
Because the reservation is rapidly running  out of room?

They are pushing and praying
Praying and pushing
While the people are dancing in the pavilion, oblivious and blind

They don't see the pushing
They don't hear the praying

No they're still dancing in the pavilion, oblivious and blind... 
They don't see the hair on Samson's head that's starting to grow back... 

So They don't hear the roof above them that's starting to crack...