earthly voyages

April, 2024

now browsing by month

 

Valentines Day in Israel

The waves are rough in the sea of love
This Valentines Day
Crows fly into the wind
Hoping for leverage
Seeking support
Buffeted though free
They call but no one hears

Accusations fly through the air
The sounds of lovers unheard, unheralded
Fractured families longing for simplicity and rest
Comfort, unambiguous pleasure
Safe harbors to anchor in

Sometimes it feels like a kiss

Sometimes just a breeze passing by

The sea is rough in Israel

This Valentines Day

Waves crash onto the shore

Depositing beautiful shells

The tiny homes of lonely sea creatures

Onto the sandy beach

That Palestinians are forbidden to walk upon

Where a man draws names on the beach with sticks

Then draws a big valentine around the names

Then writes the words, “Free Palestine”

His heart breaking with the weight of love

He builds a wall to protect his creation in the sand

But the sea is restless and just
And softly erases it all.



I Sleep with Rachel Corrie

I sleep with Rachel Corrie
Meditate on her message and meanings
She is smiling though dead
Her head tilted to her left
Her head tilted to her left
Her blond shoulder length hair
Tucked behind her ears
An all American girl
Who loved justice and the Palestinian people
Crushed by a Cat D9 bulldozer
With a restricted field of vision
And several blind spots
This last part sounds familiar no doubt
Now but a memory, a martyr
A poster on the door
Of a home in Palestine
Where her mother comes to visit
To see for herself what moved her daughter
Who wrote
“A massive military machine is killing
The people I’m having dinner with
I am witness to the destruction of a people.”

The older Palestinian woman
In whose home the poster I sleep with hangs
Has seen more than her share of humiliation
Jail
Her land stolen
And death
She says to Rachel’s mother
“There is a field where flowers grow in our village
That is called Rachel Corrie
There are streets and plazas named for her
Your daughter is our daughter
Our daughters are your daughters
We will never forget your daughter
She is with us every day
Every time this door slides closed
Every time this door slides opened”

An American Court found
The bulldozer that killed Rachel
Was paid for by U.S. Government funds
But declined to rule on the merits
Concluding that whether the financing of such bulldozers was just
Or appropriate
Was a political question
Not entrusted to the Judicial Branch

On the same day Rachel was killed
Nine Palestinians were also murdered by Israeli forces
Including a man aged 90
And a child aged four
While Rachel, second wife of Jacob
Who stole her father’s idols
Was cursed unintentionally
By the husband who loved her
And died
The way of women upon her
Her doors slid open
Her doors slid closed forever
Tears in her eyes
Words on her lips
Crying for the end
To her family’s suffering

© BRTaub, Ja’ayus, Palestine – Valentines Day 2008



The Siege of Gaza

If Hamas is a terrorist organization 
What does that make the occupying,
land-grabbing,
wall erecting,
falsely imprisoning
nuclear weapon-bearing Israelis
and the Israeli government?
The only true democracy in the Middle East? 
“Terrorist organization” is a label;
that Gaza is sealed is a fact. 
No food or medicine allowed in. 
Think Warsaw Ghetto. 
Think children starving and dying
Think “never again.”    
Besides,
Hamas saying it is going to destroy Israel
is a bit like the Sioux on reservations
saying they are going to destroy the U.S.,
when as we know,
the U.S. is destroying the U.S.,
and Israel is destroying Israel.

How It Is In Nablus

Bounded by Mount Ebal
Said to represent the curse of disobedience
And Mount Gezirim, said to represent the blessings of obedience
Some anxious chickens have preceded the dawn with crowing
After the semi automatic guns and rockets are fired
The bells rung on the half hour
And the unemployment rate rises
Like the morning sun
To sixty percent.
The city is surrounded, locked down
Only pedestrians can cross the checkpoints
In long lines
Through narrow turnstiles
Like cattle chutes
At Hawara
Sixteen miles inside the Israeli border.
But the knafeh is sweet
And at 4 A.M. the muezzins make first call
Waking the dogs
Stirring the city
Reminding the fighters to hide their gun
The Israeli soldiers to withdraw
The staff at the Medical Relief Committee
To resume their duties
At Radifia Hospital
Where the lights come on
Where soap and furniture producers, quarrymen, and stock trader
Stretch their limbs
Where forty thousand people living in refugee camps like Balata
Hide their despair
Nurse their babies and their wounds
Searching for meaning, fresh water, a piece of bread
And the visiting peace worker
Turns on the internet
Game seven in Boston
Sox versus Indians
Cavalry versus natives
Israelis versus Palestinians
Brother and sister versus brother and sister
How it is in Nablus
Sox up three to two
Top of the sixth

© B.R. Taub 10/07

Furry Bug

On a humid, dark, cloudy summer night,
Temperature still in the high seventies,
Streetlights not working,
I step from my car as a huge fluttering bug
Flies smack into my lips.
I do not see it.
I know it is not a moth or mosquito,
More a furry flying beetle of some sort.
And just as I do not see it, I do not hear it.
Rather I feel its flutter and the soft thud
As it crashes straight into the very center of my closed mouth,
Smack in the middle of my pressed lips.
I blow and brush it away quickly,
Feeling its dimensions only slightly.
I respond in surprise and shock,
But without fear or disgust.
I know at once that I have been sweetly touched
Not assaulted or attacked.
And though my rational mind recognizes it as probability expressed
A happenstance of fate,
A random intersection of invertebrate and human,
I am aware instantly of having been kissed by a beautiful stranger,
A princess living in the body of a bug,
The light but explicit tap tap tap of god’s finger
Calling forth my attention

“Hey you,” the bug commands with her furry kiss,
“Wake up, we’re in this together, man.
Live life fully aware
And appreciative of me,
Fly around in the muggy dark night
Kissing strangers with me
Let’s be in each other’s company as much as we can bear.”

I dream that night I stand beside the rushing waters
Of a mountain stream which calls to me,
Bids me enter,
To be pulled along in the frightening, exciting, inexorable flow to the sea.
I imagine being in the water.
I imagine being water.
I am a furry bug
I kiss your lips.

Ask the Sphinx – 2 approaches

There are many reasons
To travel to Egypt,
One of which is to inquire of the Sphinx,
”What should a man do?”
The instructions you are given specify only that you inquire
And make note of what you next perceive.
How you inquire is up to you.
 
1.

Approaching from the south
On your magnificent white steed
The sphinx faces east
To greet the sun, to thank the Nile
As it has every day
For over 5000 years
Over a million sunrises.
A lucky man may see one
A persistent man many
The same sun for 100 generations
Rises up and exposes the sphinx.

 
The steed and the man approach as close as possible
Close enough to see her damaged nose
Her whiskers twitching in the wind from the south
She can smell you before she sees you,
The man with the question.
It is noisy, you can hear the adjacent city
Horns, sirens, the sounds of other horses, camels, asses, humans, flies
You sit your mount hoping for the moment.
The constant Sahara stops whistling and biting your face
Then as if bidden, for no apparent reason,
The wind subsides, and the city stands still.

So you reach out to her, for the iron is hot
And say out loud, loud enough for a deaf sphinx to hear,
”What should a man do, Sphinx?”
And then you listen.
The high shriek of a hunting bird comes first
Then the song of many birds
Had they always been singing and you just
Didn’t hear them?
Or had their song just arisen?
You may count twenty thousand new suns
And still you will not know
Although it is now a little clearer what a man should do.
 
2.

Approaching from the north
On foot, as close as you can
Close enough to see her damaged nose
The sound of a muezzin calling
Signals the time to stop and be still.
A chorus of male voices joins in the chanting
Then another caller calls
And more chanters respond
All vowels emerging from the swollen gut of the soiled city
Saccharine, sacred
It is all too real
You must sit down in wonder
Awaiting quiet
Aware of the ancient cemetery
The clatter of camel hooves
The voices of your kin
When all of a sudden, and for no apparent reason,
But as you knew it must,
The hoof beats cease
The chanting ceases
The wagon wheels stop turning, stop grinding
The wind subsides,
And the city is still.
So you say out loud, loud enough so the sphinx may hear,
”What should a man do, Sphinx?”
And the voice of a young boy in a silenced carriage
Says,”Baba.  Baba.”
 
Did you hear that, Baba?
You may count your twenty thousand new suns
And still you cannot know
Although it is now a little clearer
what a man should do.