We kept the light on for him
a single bulb trembling like a borrowed breath,
watching the jawline, the dog‑eared gesture of a hand.
When the feed thinned and the frame went black,
a witness was taken, a story broken.
They called him a terrorist afterwards
stamped accusation where proof should be;
a name criminalised to justify the silence.
Say Anas first when you wake; let his name be the light you carry.
Anas, the small account we failed to balance;
his hands the stubborn proof someone was watching.
242 — speak it slow, an index of absence.
242 mouths folded into dust, into ledger lines, into timestamps on stone.
Mathematics of erasure: losses logged neat as contracts, cold as a Murdoch headline.
He kept talking into white noise, into the last pixel of daylight;
his voice a witness hammered into frame — a prayer with no dial tone.
The feed folded into earth; the camera blinked and died.
We count him with breaths we cannot spare.
Anas: a name lodged in the chest, an imprint that will not wash away.
Then the late parades like moths trained by algorithms,
flapping onto feeds with satin grief:
pop queens, red‑carpet generals, brand managers preaching solidarity.
Lady Gaga posts gloss;
Taylor Swift serves curated sorrow;
Madonna stages choreography over mourning.
Bono finds a conscience between offshore taxes and publicists
while Anas’s pixels turned to dust,
sympathy arrives with a PR footnote.
You speak now because footage burned your alibis; you cannot argue with the light.
“This crosses a red line,” you murmur, belated and careful,
as if dust redraws your decades of quiet.
Where were your microphones when Shireen went silent?
Where were your stadium lights when Gaza’s children took their last breath?
Where were your contracts, your lawyers, your cameras that never blink?
Across the static a stubborn music refuses to be bought.
Kneecap — raised in another occupation,
schooled in checkpoints and curfews
In solidarity learned by bruises.
Mo Chara cuffed for imperfect grief recorded as crime;
the court reads sorrow as threat.
And Shadia Mansour names Palestine like prayer.
Amal Murkus keeps exile burning beneath her voice;
Bob Vylan pushes spit and static into the street.
Tadgh Hickey bends a minor key into a protest,
and into small rooms learning to listen.
Roger Waters pulls at comfortable chords until they fray;
Eno would call it ambient truth
A noise that will not be prettified.
They lost gigs, playlists, invites; they paid in work, in safety, in sleep.
Praise them as stubborn weather against celebrity marble
As acid on varnish, and a rain that etches.
They chose scandal over silence,
messy allegiance over marketability and songs that would not be bought.
See the half‑voiced: the both‑siders, pundits and columnists
weighing genocide like an editorial balance,
parsing suffering into margins, staging debate over disappearances
With “....But on the one hand and on the other,” while Gaza hospitals smoulder.
They teach crowds to flatten atrocity into opinion, to count suffering like a football score.
Meanwhile the state polices compassion
pensioners pulled from vigils,
arrests for standing with Palestine Action
Wrinkled hands cuffed for carrying placards,
gentle bodies booked and processed like threats.
Starmer’s ministers sharpen laws into knives;
Protests are recast as national security.
Kettles corralled, banners criminalised,
Our solidarity made socially hazardous.
Courtrooms fill with the grey‑haired and steady‑voiced;
BBC broadcasters yawn and note the names quietly.
Too late — calendars snap; names become trending fonts.
Anas is gone; his camera lodged like a shard of glass in the skyline,
testimony turned into guilty weight.
You polished keffiyehs for the lens,
staged grief in square crops,
They practised compassion in boardroom mirrors
and dared to call it solidarity.
One short, quiet memory
When Anas brushed dust from his sleeve,
laughed at a joke off‑camera, began a sentence and trailed into the next frame.
Hold that laugh.
Hold that half‑said name.
Let it make the louder lines hurt more.
Feeds stream; the mind scrolls like a patient who cannot wake.
Footage sits like a splinter under the skin.
No celebrity hashtag can stitch back the reporters who gave their last breath for a story.
Gil said the revolution will not be televised
I bet he did not foresee a feed that livestreams massacre,
slick and sponsored, cut between ads and influencer promos, sold as shock with a logo.
The revolution will not be televised
but the slaughter will play on loop, autoplay pity and harvest outrage for clicks.
Remember Anas in every frame that would otherwise be anonymous:
the cough, the elbow, the way he steadied the mic before lost names fell from his mouth.
Remember Shireen.
Remember the 242
say them until the names scrape your tongue raw.
When the famous learn to speak only after the pixels convict them,
hold their words to the light.
Measure late courage against bank balances that moved offshore.
Measure ministers who criminalise kettles against old hands in court.
Praise those who sang when silence cost them stages.
Carry their songs into rooms that still try to forget.
We do not need curated grief; we need witness.
We do not need hashtags; we need consequence.
Keep Anas’s half‑finished laugh in your mouth
let that small sound complicate every neat PR statement.
If you cannot stand with the living, speak the dead’s names.
Say them to the quiet rooms,
to the cameras that blink,
to the ledgers that count everything but conscience.
Let the light that burned their alibis burn your excuses.
Let remembering be louder than the performance.
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