Fences

When fences have been all we’ve ever known
and grids of wires crisscrossing the earth
a terrible deep thirst within is grown
despite the generations forced to own
and be owned, violated as the dirt
When fences have been all we’ve ever known
and highways, and walls where we charge our phones
while outside crows and squirrels vie for turf
 a terrible deep thirst within is grown

Myself, I long to fly where crow has flown
to travel like an arrow on its search
When fences have been all I’ve ever known
and not the herds of buffalo, whose bones
are mingled in the soil of our birth
A terrible deep thirst within is grown
to live a life, not just pay back a loan
to know these blessed lungs for what they’re worth

When fences have been all we’ve ever known
a terrible deep thirst within is grown

Shabbat Shuva (Shabbat of Return)

and just as every life is but a link in Nature’s being and every poem just another layer of its meaning and every wave of grief and joy a flicker in its burning just so is every year, and week, and day, a new returning

to each other, working to be honest with our faces to ourselves, surrendering our need for trading places to the land, the work of being symbiotic creatures to the Spirit shaping us into our own best teachers 

may we recognize what’s ours to mend this coming year and let the waters soften us with every blessed tear tonight we raise our glass to this, while candles brightly burn –  to our own holy struggles as we turn and yet return

This is the Year (5786)

 
This is the Year

after Martín Espada

This is the year the poets drop our metaphors

Until the cops and armies drop their guns

Or even break their ranks and turn their fire

On their own generals, the very ones

Who order all this carnage and this chaos
To stop the order of the World to Come

Who fear us and the future we’re revealing 

Where violence isn’t where our strength comes from

This is the years those forced to flee their homelands
Are welcomed everywhere with bread and song
In thousands of new anthems to our freedom
Sung out in all our sacred mother tongues

This is the year the ghosts of the six million

Return to sabotage Israeli drones 

To circle all our Palestinian cousins

and walk with them, and sing their spirits home

This is the year the grandmothers still clutching
Their own keys to to their own great grandmothers’ homes
Return to mount those keys above the hearthstones
And brew pots of spiced coffee on the stove

This is the year the laws are all rewritten

In languages the colonizers banned

To reinstate the sacrosanct relation

That we belong, as people, to the land

This is the year the churches built on mass graves

With lumber from the clear cut ancient woods

Unfold themselves to let the voice of God in

And turn back into forests now for good

This is the year the faces on Mount Rushmore

Are overgrown with sweetgrass and with sage
That burst forth through those pirates’ ears and noses
Restoring those Hills to their wild age

This is the year the Eagle is remembered

For who he is: not violent arrogance

But warrior and teacher flying fearless

Over every prison, border wall, and fence

This is the year the voices of the prophets

In every city where their people starve

and preach the good news: “We are all related”

are multiplied by millions as we march

This is the year the billionaires go bankrupt

As we the people nationalize the banks
And sentence them to life working on arctic

Restoration, with their cronies in their ranks

This is the year the workers in the factories
Producing bombs, tanks, missiles, jets and drones

Take over the assembly lines, and use them 

To rebuild war-torn cities, roads, and homes

This is the year the madness of the world

Erupting in our streets and on our screens

is rallied by a rhythm that emerges

creating poetry out of the screams:

We are like water running to the ocean

We are the children of our own free dawn

We are its anthem, pulsing like a hand drum

We are full human beings, not just pawns

We are the life of everything unshackling

We are the ancient prophecies fulfilled

We’ve come this far to now redeem our birthright:

The healing of our home, the people’s will

Our Power isn’t over one another

Our Law is not a weapon or a curse

Our Truth is not the property of rulers

Our scriptures say the last will be the first

And so, may every mouth now parched and starving

Fill with the angels of clean water, bread,

And peace, and may their wings become our shelter 

And over all the earth may wholeness spread

Diasporism (Anti-Zionism) Practice

saying modeh ani — I am grateful — upon waking blessing the body breathing 

sitting at an altar
to the world to come

counting olive wood prayer beads
chanting hineni — Here I am — 
listening to the birds

reaching for the ukulele 
reaching for the tiple jíbaro 
reaching for the guitar

blessing lands and waters with their true names — 
Zhegagoynak, Michigami, 
Mikinak Minising, 

praying to my own rhythm
in my own voice
offering morning blessings 
with a Wailers song

studying Torah
studying the Torah of labor songs
of Yiddish novels, Spanish poetry,
Reggae history, Frantz Fanon,
of Goddess worship and Tarot
of seasons and plants

of every land that has helped to grow me
every language that has tuned my ear
every teaching that has enriched
the soil of my being

tending the garden
walking the dogs
talking with neighbors

listening to the cicadas
listening to the geese
listening to the river

showing up to the action,
the rehearsal, the group chat,
the meeting, the concert, the play,
the services, the birthday party,

listening to the poem, the speech,
the song, the album, the voice note,
the podcast, the friend,

listening to the crickets,
to the wind in the trees —

noticing faces, feelings,
cadences, clouds

writing the poem

saying the shema 
— all is One —
before sleeping

contemplating the waters 
that connect all life
when reciting the blessing 
for washing hands

blessing the living waters
that ever flow toward liberation
in all its wondrous forms