Poems, prayers, and verse — original work in English and Hebrew.
If I offered you a flower
Plucked from the patch
Growing between concrete
And asphalt
No word could hold its petals
Or trace its severed stem
What passes between lovers
Of the same love
Is the slow spreading of a dawn
Across wild rooftops
Answer me
With a smile
“-Bellum: A Meditation on Thanotic Theater”
The roar of the modern age
Tears across my night sky
The mask has fallen
The reverberating backdrop of stitched sounds
The vibrations painted on stretched canvas
Against which we played our roles
Have become the unfolding drama,
Center stage
The scene speaks for itself
In tones no human voice can take
When I began my lines
I did not know danger
Now I wonder what the thunder brings
Peace upon my enemies
May their cups overflow
May they lack for nothing
Peace upon my friends
May their journey in this life
Be through paradise
May they never enter hell
Peace upon my teachers
May their wisdom be remembered
May their sins be forgotten
May their life be everlasting
Peace upon my critics
May their pens never cease
May their sight be keen
May they merit to join me
Peace upon the righteous
May their light ever increase
May they rise upward like the cedar of lebanon
May their song double, triple,
Resound in four-part harmony
Peace upon my leaders
May their hearts be made of flesh
May they be guided from above in the darkest hours
May they return from love with the dawn’s light
Peace upon my victims
May their suffering be short
May their patience be rewarded
May we be purified together of our folly
Peace upon you, my friend
May you ever dwell in the house of the eternal
Peace upon me, my friend
May I never stop speaking your name
On Shabbath even the souls trapped in the hell they made get respite from their suffering.
I pray for my soul, for my wife, for my daughters, for the other families across Israel and Iran and Lebanon.
I pray because missiles and bombs, raving lunatics and angry crowds, would rather I didn’t. Would rather I give in to despair and acquiesce to madness and sign over my soul for false promises and illusions.
Or would rather I only prayed for my blood, my tribe, the children waving my flag.
That can not be my prayer.
I pray for us all:
May it be a Shabbath of peace.
May it be a Shabbath of blessing.
May it be a Shabbath of quiet.
May the righteous Lord of war
Protect the innocent
Punish the wicked
Rescue the stranded
Heal the wounded
Avenge Your image
Profaned for so long
May our Father in the heavens
Guide the hearts and minds
Of Your children taking aim
Whisper quietly into their ears
The demand of their own souls
The call of a higher order
The wisdom of a wild peace
May the Creator of all human beings
Make us safe, make us well, make us whole
Give us relief from the burden of war
Of the heart’s shadow and fears
Of the wounds of yesterday past
Of the unanswered questions
Grant us all a moment of Your favor
That we may build from our prayers
A holy home for You here below
May it be Your will that we merit to go out in peace and to return in peace, that no wrong be suffered by our warriors or be done by their hands, and that together we rise to every challenge and opportunity with which we are presented in our long, defiant, sacred history.
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Coda: I am with every innocent who has suffered, who is suffering, and who will suffer as humanity collectively stumbles towards redemption, guided by eternal love when we choose to accept it. I make no distinction between human and human. My enemies are only those who rise against me, and even they are only lower-dimensional projections of the distortions in my higher-dimensional relationship with my Creator.
May we know safety, justice, and peace soon.
When I think of where You placed me
A garden, watered by mist and river
A stretch of sand and sky between salty depths
A small rock spinning around a small star
Swirling through eons of nothingness
In flowing rhythm with a stream of myriad stars
Spread out across a forgotten galactic horizon
Just one, of uncountable legions –
When I think of how You know them all,
Call to each by name –
How glad!
How grateful!
Not to be counted
With those who look up
And can not see Your wonder:
Blessed is the One who enlightens the blind.
Oh child of the moon
Your tides are gently rising
With the shadow across your face
Your eyes glow with reflected light
Luminous pools, overflowing, then
Narrowing into shining slivers of nothing
Only for your rebirth
In a new circle of your quiet love
Distant whirling
From the center of your dance
Never touching
Your beloved
Upon
(From)
Whom you shine
Oh child of the moon
You are empty now
But your fullness
Is on the
Rise
Go to yourself
From what you were
Told you are
From your father’s
Hopes and dreams
From the limits
Of those around you
To the land that
I will show you
Within your soul
Beyond the horizon
Of your waking world
To the sacred soil
Of your questing heart
Searching for me
Before I called
Go for yourself
Go for your freedom, your beloved, your truth
Cross over the abyss
Between what is and what will be
Cross over the river
Flowing from Hermon
To the land of the rain
Justice sown
Salvation bloomed
Go for your blessing
Of the children of the earth
Get yourself
Abraham
To the land
I promise
You will become
Who you truly are
All year long we avoid our shadow, we avert our gaze from the many ways in which it falls upon others and robs them of the light…
All year long we hide in the very tree we were warned against, we pretend to ourselves that our maker will not see us, does not want to see us, if we don’t want to be seen…
All year long we tell ourselves a story, a grand myth of our virtuous heroism and their vicious villainy, proclaimed on an empty stage to a crowd of none…
But there is freedom in admitting the truth.
“We are neither so brazen nor so stubborn as to say before you that we have not failed; but both we and our fathers –
We are guilty.
We betrayed.
We robbed.
We slandered.
We caused error –
And we caused injustice.
We acted maliciously.
We acted violently.
We dealt falsely.
We gave bad advice.
We misled.
We raged.
We mocked.
We rebelled.
We resented.
We lusted.
We over-indulged.
We erred.
We acted negligently.
We tormented.
We doubled-down.
We acted unjustly.
We corrupted.
We disgusted.
We strayed.
We oppressed.
We turned away from your instructions and your good laws, and it was not worth it – while you have been just in all that has happened to us; you have acted in truth and we caused injustice.
What can we say before you?
What story can we tell you?
You know everything – hidden and revealed.
. . .
And so may it be willed before you:
That you let go of all our failures.
That you overlook all of our mistakes.
That you forgive all of our negligence.
. . .
And may the words of my mouth be desired,
And the meditation of my heart be before you,
My lord –
My rock –
My liberator.”
Welcome, my dear
Daughter of many worlds
Dropped into this thin plane
Of cells and stardust
Across invisible bands
Beneath the rainbow
Form made flesh
Revelation of the obsidian light
Here, my dear
All is always new
Embracing the seed of your soul
Cosmic soil for your mind’s flower
Ever growing
Ever reaching
Back through the stars themselves
Tracing memories of the forest’s mystery
In ever wider circles of the known
Believe, my dear
In the deep roots
In the rising trunk
In the fruitful limbs
In the soaring canopy
Of your sacred destiny
In your own space
In your own time
You will know
You are home