that’s how you like your poetry,
That’s how you would like everything,
No stress, no test, easy on the breast,
but short and sweet has no protein,
won’t build your bones, quite contrary,
the poem that doesn’t make you think,
it’s just a cavity, a precurse to self~decay
a drip dripping in just another day of you evaporating

Every Child                             Not every Child                                  
Has known God,                    Has known God,
Not the God of names,          All no-named, especially Gods,
Not the God of don’ts,           No don’ts, only one do.


Not the God who ever          No Life, surviving is weird,
Anything weird,                    Anything good, beyond belief,
But the God who only          But this God speaks not-a-word,
knows four words and         vocabulary of wet, dampening silence,
keeps repeating them,          no repetition or explaining required,
saying:                                     saying (nothing, only raining tears:):

“Come dance with Me.”       “Rain is water, life,”

Come Dance.                           Come Survive,. Dance in Rain.

Hafiz (1320-1389).                    Lipstadt (20~21st Century)

flesh became the silent cathedral
who whispers of bread.

the child's eyes
as black a veil as the Gaza night
have not tasted hope
                                                            ­            
and the multitude of the thin, faces sallow,
ghost the empty cooking pots
that offer Lilies

when hunger falls heavy
the moment before a scream
the sorrow sparrows grieve
what hell waits softly with silent breath.

once upon a time in the Holyland
the earth forgot to morn
and silence wrote the ending.

She was drawing,
not for anyone.
Not even for herself.

Just…
  because her hands needed to move.
The pencil didn’t ask for approval.
It didn’t perform.
It just followed
 whatever was humming
  beneath her skin.

I’ve seen someone dance
 in the middle of cleaning.
Not to music.
Just to rhythm.

A private conversation
 between body and gravity
     where
      I was only
       accidentally
             invited.

There’s a holiness
 in the movements people make
  when they don’t know they’re being seen.

Not holy because they’re beautiful.
But because they’re untranslated.

They’re not trying to mean something.
They just are.

I’ve started collecting these moments.
Not in pictures.
Not in notes.
Just
  in the place behind my ribs
  where wonder stays
  when it’s too quiet to name.