Gaza Burns, Gaza Bleeds Poem by Mohammad Younus

Sunbeams dance upon the water,
their shimmer blurred by tear-filled eyes,
as if the sea itself weeps for what it sees.
Children, women, men—
laughter stolen, dreams erased,
lives reduced to ash and echoes.
These are the ones who will not return,
their names whispered in the wind,
carried like smoke into the void.

Bombs descend, rockets scream,
artillery rips the sky apart—
a symphony of destruction
composed by hands that never feel the pain.
The earth shudders beneath their weight,
homes crumble into dust and cries,
streets once pulsing with life
become graveyards of memory.
The air is thick with the scent of burning,
of lives unraveling, of futures erased.

Under siege, they starve—
not just for bread, for water, for light,
but for hope, for justice, for a breath of peace.
Their voices rise, fragile but defiant,
only to fade into silence—
a silence too vast, too cruel,
as the world turns away,
too distant to listen,
too comfortable to care.

My arms cannot reach to hold them,
to shield them from the storm,
to mend the broken, to bury the dead.
I am a witness, but what is witnessing
without action, without change?
Too soon, the moment fades—
a cloud drifts in, swallowing the sun,
and the world moves on,
as if the blood spilled here
is not its own.

The sea, once a mirror of golden light,
now reflects only smoke and fire,
a shattered vision of what once was.
Waves crash against the shore,
as if trying to cleanse the scars,
but the scars run too deep.
And Gaza burns, and Gaza bleeds,
its wounds raw, its heart shattered,
while the world watches, unheeding,
as if this is not its burden,
as if these are not its people.

But they are.
They are our people.
Their pain is ours,
their loss, our loss.
And until we see them,
until we hear them,
until we stand with them,
Gaza will burn,
Gaza will bleed,
and we will all be complicit.

— MyKoul