Share me the light you’ve won with efforts
Not lazy; I'm just too weak to learn anew
My bones crack, my brain's old, my spirit dims out
I don't have the strength to replant what once grew

These screams in my ears are too real
This pang of pain, this grief; excruciating
“Just jump into it,” they say, with no feel
They’ve never lived, yet keep advising

I set up my own path, a line of antique bricks
It ran from my backyard to the village temple
And ruined it was, by men hunting for relics
While I was on a trip to preach and fix a muddle

I built a new path in the next following days
A stronger one, lined with fine wooden fences
And I left again to dispel lies and hearsays
Protecting strangers from possible offenses

Coming home to find my soul path torn down
I reminded myself, "They knew not what they did"
I fixed it once more, then went to a sacred town
All prayers to gods to take care of what I built

Years after blessing mortals and doing good,
I returned to my lovely birthplace and cried
Seeing my house flat on the ground, my path removed
I told myself, “This slight unease won’t take my light”

I could weave wisdom from unlikeliest sources
Stones, mountains, a witch’s curse, a ghost’s wail
I've turned many wounds into revered forces
A weakling to strength, a stuck ship to sail

Too busy with other people’s plights
I thought my light was self-sustaining
It was not eternal as I was told—it died
Had to pretend it was there and burning

The sun of my youth has set in the west
Under the dark, I’m now awaiting stars
Despite its howl, I’ll force my heart to rest
None I can teach it, but accepting its scars

Share me the light you have learned
This passing time I cannot back turn

I found myself hugging my closet this morning
I got up, walked over to her, stood in front of her and stuck my hands between some things hanging,
Put my cheek against the cold plastic of the hangers, and it felt right

Now this sounds strange
But something became quite clear to me when I felt like my closet was hugging back
It's not the things you wear, it's how you wear them
My closet loves me because I wear my clothes freely
I never wore them to please anyone else
That's why when he told me he wanted me to wear something else I said, "No."
Because my fashion is a part of me and it has been
Whether I was in the fourth grade, wearing my lily pad skort, pink Mary Janes and a neon green top
Or in college,
Unapologetically sporting my baggy white tee, ripped jeans, Birkenstocks and socks
I will not submit to you

My clothes love me back because I am not afraid
My closet hugs me back because she knows that I will never again let a man tell me
"That's ugly."
My fashion is my power.
Let it ring from every tower, you will not tell me what I can put on this body ever again
My body is my temple, and it was not built on your land so you can
Shove it

-E (c) 2017

Whats become of the creed, my brother?
People filling their coffers
with so much ***** coin
And filling their head
with empty irrationalities;
A temple of gold is no buidling
to atone their sins.
Oh why Oh why, cant they see
the cobwebs of dogma gathered
in their temple over the ages.
How do I see all this, my brother?
and they dont.
None of this was to be,
Not in the book that they swear on.
So lets stop waiting now,
No more prophets are coming now.
It is time, lets bring this diseased
temple of theirs down on them.
It is time, my brother,
for the gods to die now.
They need some new ones now
We build a promised land now
From the ruins of the old now.

The temple that we laid down
in our past is in ruins,
the goddess has evanesced,
I lay flowers at the feet
of our devotion,
I still pray, with silent hope
that you’ll come back
So we can rebuild
this religion,
that was
You and I.

You will be a chapter in the Bible of my life
And you
Will not fade from me
Because this body is a temple
And I am the god to which it is devoted:
When I am old I will trace the scars on my hands
As proof that I reached for something.
You may try to erase me.
You may even try to unmake me
But love and hate
Look so similar as scars
And thanks to yours we carry matching ones.
I will tell my stories, because they are mine to keep.
I will write about
The girl who made me afraid to walk the hallways of my own school
Her loathing for herself so complete that it swallowed me as well,
And I will shout my words
Because it is my right as a creature with a heart and a voice
And my duty as a human being.
I have led a violent life
Battered by a sea of people
Whose cowardice is stronger than their goodness.
But if I am silent about them
They'll **** me and say I deserved it.
If I am silent
Your threats worked
And you will continue to meet the world with your fear and your viciousness
And leave it uglier than you found it.
So I am here to say that
Whether you hate me or not
I am as sacred as you are
And my life
Is my own.
It is not my job to make you comfortable.
It is not my job to disappear
If you dislike what you see in me.
You don't own me.
You don't own my art.
You don't own my feelings.
You don't own my stories,
And you don't own what I do with them.

Let us sleep
like the staircase
that once led up to the Temple Mount
no longer able to carry pious feet to prayer,
but the well experienced cracks
over which they once walked
expose the heavy burden
of well worn memories
under which we now slumber.

Sunrise from Masada.
The view from the casemate wall
of Silva's camp below.
Shadowy ghosts
are cast and scattered
and given voice as the wind
shouts through the buildings ruins
L'-he-rut Zi-yon
and there is no reply.
Only the songs of the Tristramit
who mimic the voices
of every child martyred here, singing:
*Shalom al Ziyon, Shalom al Ziyon"
and there is no reply,
only the dreams of the interrupted
and the disturbed peace
of excavated ruins.