~with thanks to T. Riddle for the inspiring photos~

there are color photos of budding nascent fruits,
an unexpected delivery to the eye’s inbox
exuding new youthfulness in
variegated shades of green
and

solitary ant traveler on a leafy space shuttle,
making its way, crossing galaxies
drinking from eye-drop seas
living off the land
and

life bursting out unreservedly asking for
no favors, nor recompense but to
breath, drink of soil nutrients,
to live to give back more
than it takes
and

to be chosen, plucked, torn from its environs,
to be the fruit of sustenance and a
delivery system to pass on its
****, tasty, enhanced flavors,
its seeded progeny the
chance to same
and

the ant travels on and about fearless,
its mini-size and sure footed body
leaping leaf to leaf to live and
to be fruitful and
multiply
and

multiple multipurposed prayers multiply,
of human origin, as humans blink at the
new-life miracles repetitious, wistfully
wishing every prayer, could be
answered thusly so lusciously
but

this it cannot be always, so we accept
as best we can, small proofs,
of regeneration, life eternal,
wetting browned, dark
soil with blotches of
salty damp-tears
encased within a
moment~eased
hopeful heart

It’s good to be hated!  But I know my name…


hate, blackened, misshapen, ugly, unnatural,
yet
how it clarifies the mind, like a cupped hand
carrying clear, cold, brook water to dry mouth,
to shock, enliven, resets resets, all your priorities
with alacrity, a word I prefer cause it is an intuitive
combo of eagerness + alarm, suddenly much of the

trivial is no longer worthy of your  ‘to do’ list,
you, without thinking, DNA filter your filters,
those screens that digest, then reject & reflect
the inputs ongoings around you, and you are now
reclassified! by the hate surrounding, it declassifies
the time wastrels, reinterpreting most everything 
on a bipolar scale of  1  or  10, there are no shades,
the middle ground of gray be fully eliminated,
just like those who wish to
eliminate
                                                                ­                   me.


in a palette of black or white, your
e +e,
(essence and existence) cannot be ever
a gray area, yes, of course, the sunshine
is yellow bright, and the grass is spring
flushed green, the multicolored daffodils
newly define colors varietal, and the waves
of the Sound, roll relentlessly, but hate can be
coated, camouflaged and subtle disguised, but
we  know, oh how we know, and how we wanted
to forget, our “sins”, our original liabilities of
our multi colored skins, our religion, our race & ethnicity,

but NOT our names!

the Rabbis tell us that God nearly did not keep
his promise to Abraham, to rescue his progeny
from slavery in Egypt but saved them only because:

‘On account of four things Israel was redeemed
from Egypt: they did not change their names, they
did not change their language,  they did not speak
slander and not even one of them was found to be
promiscuous.’^

I know my name; and though you cannot distinguish
me by dress, know not my moral life, but now you
know my name,
given to me by my parents, in the language of my ancestors:

Mordecai Netanel ben (son of) Eliyahu Chaim**

Per my family lore, as told to me by my parents, our
family fled from Spain because of the Inquisition (1478),
settled in a small town in Germany on the banks
of the river Lippe; and from the shtetls of Poland,
and those who survived or avoided the Holocaust
ultimately left Europe, came here, to the land of
the free, the United States of America with names,
in their language, with memories intact.

I will not flee this country,
for I know my true name,
inscribed in my pores, in my
DNA

<>
(but should I have to…there is a sanctuary.)
May 2 2024

Our Holy Communion of Words

you wrest my words away, with tongue and teeth,
running their sounds out with your soft tonguing,
gentling their enunciated freedom to float airborne,
but not before,
your teeth hone them sharper, wiser, better,
before freeing the letters
for life eternal rebirthing,
swapping, warping words,
into a
a holy communion

then with thy lips closing after them,
wishing them godspeed,
safe travels to yet another’s eye imbibing,
until released once more,
traveling from souls you likely
never to meet, embrace, greet,
but to whom you have formed a
direct intangible tangling,
shared wafered words,
a holy communion*

But

yours,
your words,

gut punch me,
how could you know,
where/\were
you there beside me when in darkened hours
the sun shone brightly, illuminating with bent light
our crevices and our crevasses,
your, words, written,
stun me into crazy, as if
you were within my interior
a cacophony exposed for all to hear,
my grunts & oofs,
visceral, too real, and
my actual tears cascade unfiltered
into the cup of our tangible entangling,
salted & starry*


our holiest communion yet!

~~~~~~~~
Fri Feb 9,
10:00pm~10:30pm

"I will create as I speak."

<>
these profound and most serious of words,
vibrate within my chest (really!) as I
tongue test them, having just awoken
and a Sabbath ~Saturday looms before me,
naked and full of
potential.

I am hopeful, and unafraid, by the clean sheet of twenty four hours that covers me nearly toes to head, a singular occurrence,
normative
would be dread of the shroud of lists of items of urgencies that demand outage justifyingly,
urgencies crying out,
attend to me now!

but this day different, a sleepy peacefulness
compromises my interstitial spaces, and an amber color of
calming quiet fills them, no raucous splashes,
no errant droplets hinting at the fullness-yet-to-come
when the tanks of
empty are quietly, with a silent sigh of finality, announce the profundity of sufficiency and satisfaction facing
undefined emptiness,
that these contradictory sensations are
harmonious extant
within me for the foreseeable momentary.

Dai!

this single syllable Hebrew word for “enough,” issued in one breath, like “the end!” hits me with a slap of sensibility as a closing lid on this just about to possibly boil *** of emotions and internal combustion.

two last thoughts burr me mind before signing off:

the contradictory nature of the blanket of
an unscripted openness of a day ahead, and the
totality of its fulsome satisfaction it offers,
do not confuse me.

no scholar I, it occurs that the word Dai,
unlike any other, has a root unknown to me,
but internet of godlike humans had anticipated my query and offers me irony and reassurance that I am so not the first to wonder and know this satisfying confliction of this two headed Hydra send-story, sensatory, balanced imbalance
for the root of this common word used daily to say:
“enough,” “stop,” or “that's sufficient.”

comes from the root is DaWaH דוה which literally means
“to flow or extend outward.”

and though
*I created this poem as I spoke,**
I only reiterate what my ancestors already knew
thousands of years ago!

by the bye,
the Hebrew phrase "I will create as I speak,”
is well and better  known to you as:

Abracadabra.


Dai!

Dripping wet
December gets
It frets
The rains have overstepped

It’s not July
No not September
It’s been long August has slept

Winters just checked into December
Changing the air to mode, cold
But the rains have overstepped

Cold and wet December gets
Last it is, but never the least
Brings in joy and festivities

Within a day or maybe two
The rains will vanish in thin air
Pleasant weather and sunshine
December makes promises fair