I Am Not

I Am Not
Interested
In idols
Of humans.
I'm Jewish
After all.

I wish I
Didn't need
Labels: white
Versus black
Man, woman
Short and tall.

I hope one
Day to care
Just for You
Who is Big
And not me
Who am small.

To break through
And connect
And just do
My best not
To need so
Many walls.

Yom Kippur

My love, in My eyes,
Is the apex of beauty.

My people are perfect
Like the cries of a child

Never a fall
From which it doesn't recover.

Not a single blemish
That I can't brush aside.

It always looks tall
From the top of My shoulders.

Calm and collected
As it's held in My arms.

The Market of Shabbos

I want to get to a place

Where I don't have the time

To think about images

Too busy in cycles of 

Informing and exchanging

Taking flight and upgrading

Deciphering and deplaning

Keeping up with the beat

Of the conductor,

The master of

Prayer.

Selichot

I have died
So many times
That when I go
It won't be new

My eyes will close
My mouth ajar
I'll say the words
I know as true:

There is no doubt
There is no I
There's only Truth
There's only You

Then, wrapped in white
I'll wait and see
The Heavens' first
Light shades of blue

I'll give my thanks
And wash my hands
Shake off the dust
And start anew.

180

There's a lady
Who for years
I would see

On the street
Taking walks
Dragging half
Of her body.

She's here now
And I cannot
Believe my eyes.

Her back straight,
No longer angled
Forty-five degrees,
She is running.

Down in Downtown Miami... Looking Up

For the past few days, I've seen a lot of new faces among the homeless in downtown Miami, close to my job. Two caught my attention. They chose to lie down, shirtless, on what has always been for me the most disgusting piece of concrete in all of downtown, by a sewage disposal, under the metro-mover, at the back entrance to Macy's. The stench of urine, feces, and all sorts of green chemicals (incongruously just meters and a double-door away from air-conditioned opulent fashion displays) is abhorrent, but these half-crazy men, laying there, asking indefinitely for spare change, consigned to their misery, is infinitely more shocking. Do they not realize anymore how low they've fallen? Not being homeless, bedless, shirtless, but specifically choosing to wallow in the filthiest block of perhaps all of Miami? "How can the image of G-d live in such a dumpster?," I pondered. Then I immediately thought, "Am I really any better?" I know that I could easily fall into something just like that, were it not for His constant mercy. And, even where I am right now, so fragile and vulnerable, compared to His Place is it not much worse than that filthy corner? Am I not homeless and shirtless when it comes to Torah and Mitzvot? And yet during this entire month, the month of the 13 Attributes of His mercy, the King leaves His Palace and comes into this lowly field, this empty lot, greets this half-crazy, nauseatingly dirty and pungent wanderer, smiles and asks, "What can I do for you My son?" "Take me home, Father. Take me home. Lift me up, help me walk, perhaps on the way I'll realize where I was and where it is that I truly belong..."

L'Chaim

It's enough
Said Moses
To Korach

When his wife
Made him not
Know his place.

Enough, said
Samuel
To Saul

After he
Failed to see
His mistake.

So enough
Of you, too
My dear friend.

I'm happy
To have had
What we had

For as short
And as long
As it was.

It's been fun
It seemed grand
But that's life.