The wheat is an ocean,
Waves bowing to the wind
In whispering prayer.

The date palms explode in the sky:
Fireworks celebrating our return
From 2,000 years of exile.

And this playground
I’m swinging on right now
Was malarial swamp
Before we came back.

I walk slower here.
The weeds won’t grow any faster.
Mount Gilboa on one side,
Mount Gilad on the other.
I’m a pee in a pod.

I reach out
Break the seal
Give aim
To extinguish
The non-hunger desire
For tongue tickling tasty
Canned Whipped Creamed.

I love the power of flower bouquets
to persuade all those
just passing by

to bow
and breathe
and sometimes cry.

I want to extract
the Egypt that’s slithered under my skin
and into my flesh and blood:

(“For the Soul of the flesh is in the blood.”)

I want to regurgitate
twenty years of toxic television
injected through my ever-dimming eyes.

I want to mute
my lifetime of slurs, cuss words, and verbal abomination,
wielded by festering egocentric hormone.

I want to reincarnate
the innocence of my own imagination
banished somewhere in the dark of night.

I want to extinguish
twenty years of popped-culture propaganda
rerunning over my mind.

All these -
still seeping through the brick walls
of repentance I have amassed
thus far.

Therefore,

I want to, at least, out live
the destruction I have sewn,

and one day, give You,
fruits in pureness grown.

When the dam of daily-doings
crumbles and
gratitude floods my innerspace,

I can feel myself falling,
right out of this man-suit,

or is it flying?

right off of this wick,
just holding me down.

On our beach, as a child
I lived in the sand,
celebrating a mighty castle
that challenged the pounding sea.

An impenetrable fortress
Seized by armed green soldiers!
They raised their feathered flag
triumphant in the battle.
Little did they know
the war had just begun.

In all their green
helmets, guns, and mortars
no soldier stood up
to the burning laser
of magnified sun!

The stench of melting flesh
filled the air like burning tires.

The survivors called “retreat!”
     alas
Fate was already sealed.

The end of their pain
and the end of a game
came with a splash
when the tidal wave crashed.

Dragged out to sea:
     little green soldiers
     a fortress
     and me.

Creativity Bottle

If only I could pry the cork
from this Creativity Bottle,
beached on the shores
of laziness.

I’d suck this bottle dry,
gobble down the passion,
create art until I cry, from–

bulging tear ducts:
inkwells waiting till
        all’s well
or
        all’s hell

when words’ll sell me
a free ticket
to poetic paradise:

        immersed in sunny verse
        ocean sounds with crashing nouns
        adjectives align with voluptuous verbs
        pouring through poetic pores

cramming this Creativity Bottle
for the next dear friend
pleading for some inspiration.

Walking.
Eyes on the trail.
left, right,
left, right.

_____ Green forest passes by,
_____ brown dirt and rocks
_____ that grow

Walking.
Eyes on the past.
left, right,
left, right.

_____ We love this land,
_____ roots resting deeper than
_____ terror arrows can pierce

Walking.
Eyes on the path.
left, right,
left, Black.

_____ Charcoal trunks, shock and pain
_____ consumed by flame
_____ and Evil.

Staring.
Eyes gaze up.
left, right,
left, right.

_____ Soot covered skeletons
_____ pray skyward, screaming
_____ in silence.

Our living presence
interrupts
_____ this frozen eulogy:

_____ Trees we planted upon our return,
_____ we huddled underground
_____ as they stood up to burn

_____ If a rocket falls in a forest
_____ with no one there to hear it
_____ does it make a sound?

Walking.
Eyes dripping.
left, right,
left, right.

_____ Black ash on running shoes
_____ rubs off
_____ with each walking step

and that’s enough
for me to think today