The Shame Of Ignorance-Poem

Do me a favor,
speak in silence,
speak only in silence to me,
and walk with me in the darkness
of my dreams.

Peak under my skirt
and see all the intimate
crevices of my mind. While
I wear my ego on my sleeve
and roll prolific words off
the tip of my tongue.

kiss my heart
with furious love,
I’ll wipe the tears
off my pen and bite
into the fruit of adjectives
and immaculate verbs.

I understand God—
while the butterfly
flies into the silence
of the wind—not
only through
metaphors added
to many inspired words.

And like a feathered hat
I’ll wear your desire
on the top of my head,
covering the shame of
my ignorance, pinned
like nothingness on the
breastplate of my coat.

Conversation With God | Like A Vine

Why me God?
It’s the perpetual question
One asks in distress.

Why did my way of making
A living suddenly dry up?
It’s as if a beaver built a dam,
And stopped a life giving river from
Flowing downstream; instead, turning
It into a dry creek bed of death.

I’ve put countless hours
Into my business
Just like anyone else,
Not to mention
The tears I’ve shed and
I’ve literally bled too.
No need to recount this Lord
You’ve seen what I’ve been through.

Between my wife and I
It was roughly 100 hours
Each week we patiently
dedicated
To our means of making a
Honest living.

So, it wasn’t because of neglect,
You control the world–
Why did you let my business
Come to such horrendous turmoil?

God’s answer:

You can’t expect to have a business
Get you by,
How else can I get your attention when
You’re so busy earning your bread?

A scribe can’t write from a lofty place when
It’s in the trenches that you see the
Real action in.

If you look around you
You’ll see
People are distressed
similar to how you feel.

How can you see humanity anyway else?

How can you feel their pain
if your living in a gilded cage,
With all the comforts
Of a bloated king?

A vine produces better wine
When it’s under duress.

Take away a little water from its roots,
Make the vine struggle a little,
And the end result is that
The wine is sweeter,
More intoxicating,
increasing its final
Market value.

The conclusion is
That the particular vintage,
All agree,
Is good!

Spices

Certain spices remind me of home

An intoxicating vibe.

Divine presence—

The glory cloud of God.

While the sh, sh, sh, sound
Of the pressure cooker
Heralded the good news,

Love is more
than
Spoken words,

Love is also found in the culinary peculiarities
of domestic life too.

What permeated the air,

A harmony of aromatic spices:

Cumin; wet earth, lover’s body sweat, muddy fingers, earthy pungent aroma in between moist crevices.

Saffron; delicate Andalusian flowers, moonlit dew on soft rose petals, the intoxicating smell of my lovers nipples.

Oregano; sharp dry earth, decaying flowers and forest leaves, the ecstasy of a recently worn path through the dessert ground.

Ancho Chile Peppers; chocolate river running through a tree canopied mountain, the loving
Fragrance between her thighs, the excess lime found at the bottom of a cold beer.

These are the flavors I found—
Past the entrance,
Past the turning of the knob,
As I walk in and close the door to the outside.

Helping Others | True Religion

I have strong opinions about God
I’ve seen His work in my life
Because I’m a Jew, I can’t call him
A man.

Religion, emphasizes dogma over truth.
It separates people by what they believe.
Hair splitting exists in every
Belief. One can argue and counter
Argue until blue, none the wiser
One’s left.

Arguments never won a
Soul over to God,
it just creates
Friction between
You and me.

Helping people when they are down,
Without an agenda and asking
Anything in return,
That breaks the barriers, regardless
Of religious takes.

It’s a certain
Indicator you have God in your life.
When you love your fellow man whether
They believe in your views or not.

Show me you have God in your life,
I’ll show you a peaceful
And caring man, who lets others
Believe what they wish.

There are many roads that
Lead to God,
But very few ways to show that He
Truly operates in our lives.

Why We Clean

Zachor, means remember.
Remember when we left Egypt
In haste, while the bread
We made had
No time to raise?

Spring cleaning began
When God commanded us,
To look for the HameSs
In all our homes.

A little leaven here and
There—during those eight
Fateful days is prohibited to
Eat.

MaSsáh, we are told is a
Substitute we can have. It’s
Bread with no leaven in it,
Considered—the bread of life.

Within eighteen minutes it
Must be cooked and,

Eighteen is the numerical
Equivalent for life.

Life is ultimately, what
God wants us to have.

Thus, we clean prior to
Passover, we clean all the
Leaven we can find, in
Perpetual memory of our
Exodus out of darkness
And into the newness of life.

It’s The Little Things

A song of joy,
In times of despair-

It’s all we have
When we are
Grateful to
Breath the air
You’ve given us
LORD.

Help me to be
Reminded of
The little
Things, such as:
The rhythmic dance
Of wind swayed
Trees, the delicate
Shapes of clouds
Against
An infinite blue sky,
The fragrance of
Morning dew.

The song of laughter,
Being embraced by
My child, It’s
The little things
I crave that bring
Me joy.

Philosophy Of Rain

Sitting in a car with
My wife,

Listening, talking

And working
Out our thoughts.

A loving dialog ensues.

Heavily engaged
In a deep topic
About God.

My wife’s feelings,
Vulnerability
And how much
She believes

In a deity that
She’s never seen.

Our car
Transporting
Our thoughts,
Philosophically.

God, is so elusive
That It’s only through
Metaphors that I can
Really see.

While,
Rain flickers outside
Onto the
Windshield delicately.

With rhythmical
Pluvial
Intensity.

Mimicking,

Words that are falling
Into the sacred space
Of our Volkswagen Bug.

Bouncing off
Glass and ears.

Outdoors,

Heavenly
Precipitation,

Is drumming
A soft
Painting
Of droplets.

Filling the blank spaces
Of questions—

Left unheard.

Oak-Near Our Home

There’s a majestic oak tree
In the park near our home.
Every time I stop and stare
at its mighty branches and
expansive shade,
it reminds me of God.

2 Buck Read

2 bucks for a good read
wouldn’t have thought I’d
needed a life changing book.
Searching for a muse
when men cross the road of
life. There’s something inside
that desires more, more than
we can give. On a dust covered
shelf at a 5 and dime store-I
found a book whose pages inside
was God speaking to me. It was
written by a woman and the finger
of-The All Mighty. Can you imagine
a secular book with words of fire?

God Is Understood In Silence

Anthropomorphically
We understand God is-
Understood in the
Language of men.

In metaphors we comprehend:

Arms,
Legs,
Back,
Fire and
Smoke

“God is incorporeal”, the saying goes.
Is?
Is, attaches
meaning to a “thing”
God is…
Means God has
has, implies
a paradoxical
form.

Language is:
In this regard,
explaining of God-
limited.

Prophets spared no
Words to make us hear
melodies of what God
is-

In those days questions
so deep, to the masses was
kept language unfettered and
free.

In order to
understand.
the key
To a mindful
liberty-
Remembering that
the deep things belong
to God.

Then Maimonides said, silence!
Silence is best
to understand the depth
of what language lacks
to explain the existence
Of God.