Nothing new here to this community
we are one in our creative unity
You know when you get that creative spark
Like as asteroid in the dark
And its so exciting
You can't wait to start writing
But before your fingers touch the keys
you find yourself ill at ease
Take solace, my friends, you must just push through
You'll find your path and it will be new
That wall of water may be there
But it won't be so bad if you don't care
if that great idea is really so good
because another will come, it's just the way in this 'hood.

Is what I want
I can feel it now a little, had it once
just kind of side by side for awhile
just check each other out, not keep a file
let things unfold in a relaxed normal way
I want you as my friend
first of all
that's the only ways it's ever worked for me
I guess it's not the most gushy and romantic
or the most tantric or spiritual or connected and then rejected
Just a natural kind of thing, that comes easily
to my being

I quake, can't explain
the pain
her cruel words caused me

Now will I lose my job?
Be taken down by the mob?

It sounds too silly to repeat
but my heart skipped a beat
and it's still hard, not to be afraid.

How I admire you
true
can't be you, am not you
am never enough for you

went down a different road
took my consequences
no complaints
only always wishing
I could be, me, and be OK in your eyes.

Trying to get back in the swing
my ears ring
Must do this work to prepare
pain in the air
my throat, my ears
harder to fight the fears
will I ever be myself again?
free to create my minutes
my story
to see it to the end?

A paper on my door saying I hadn't payed my rent and was to be evicted, thrown out
in three days
This morning as I was measuring laundry detergent into a washer at 6:30 AM a lady
stopped and asked if I knew where a certain address was written on a lease on a clip board
and I didn't know, but thought that must be repo-lady, or collection-lady or eviction-lady

Two lovely Chinese older ladies in the office.  Under new management.  Every year it's
"under new management" and why was I so angry?  It was frightful
Another eviction notice posted on my door after they found I actually DID pay my rent
Oh, look, here it is, you don't have to look in your computer
They said, confiding, about the sins of the OTHER
A lot of people don't pay their rent after the Holidays
Moneys gone, they just "forget."

And I thought of all the people on spending sprees I saw during the Holidays with a gleam in their eye sort of like people get in Casinos carrying out huge boxes of things and stuff
and it's all so happy and festive and I wondered where do people get all that money?

Haifa, Israel, a Saturday before the Second Gulf War
The Iraq War, the Shock and Awe War, the war with embedded journalists traveling in
tanks across dusty deserts the smart way with no bulky supply lines following them
And they arrived and it quickly became apparent the supply line was a good invention

The beach is filled with people, enjoying their last few days of peace
People color the beach a kind of brown, moving brown, like ants wandering around a hill the entire beach is their hill right now in that moment a respite of the stress to come
Funny how War could be on some kind of timeline, with everyone waiting for it
like a Super Bowl game, or the second coming or a tornado or flood or nuclear bomb
Breathe this fresh air now, for tomorrow will find you smothered in a bomb shelter
crammed into small spaces with strangers even, or people you don't like, and screaming children

Your plane was due to leave for Florida the next day, but there was no seat for me.
At first that bothered you, that we had no money for me to go anywhere, only you
but now you took any chance you got to leave this place that was our new home
"We're making cookies," a couple said who we ran into down there.  
If there's an air raid, you can stay with us they said to me.  
And I imagined the pleasant aroma of butter
and sweet and nuts filling a windowless room with a Hebrew TV station crackling quickly in a language I still couldn't keep up with while we munched until we were like full balloons
in a land with the bus driver turning up the news updates on the radio every hour really loud so everyone could hear them, day in and day out, because this was part of life here. And most of what I could follow after so many hours of study was that most words at the end of a sentence on the news ended with -eeem.  Usually in threes, -eem, -eeem, -eem, which is maculine plural and sometimes there was MemShalah, which is Prime Minister.

It was your most noble hour, coming shortly after you rampaging up and down the hallways
of our cement apartment building, just a box but a nice one with a view of Haifa Bay saying Saddam does too have a bomb, and you just wait when the scuds start falling. You just wait.
But you weren't waiting.  You were going home.
And no I didn't believe Saddam had a bomb although I've never met anyone who agreed with me since then and that is getting to be a long time ago.  
Even though there were Freedom Fries now and a ban on French wine and I don't particularly like the French in many ways, still I believed them and Mahomood El Baradei
because he was a very smart man except American don't believe there can be smart, effective individuals and people working very hard in places filled with dust and ignorance and lacking
so many comforts and conveniences
And how could you check a whole country anyway?  
With connections, by being an insider and by being very clever and that's what I thought sitting in the living room watching CNN International being piped for free into our living room.
And you were terrified and you left in a sweat and a day or so later the War began

and I watched the War on CNN International in our living room after you were gone, and it was just mass destruction from great heights like someone's ridiculous plan of Urban Renewal from way too high up and I felt sorry for all the
people who would soon be called "collateral damage" and I felt ill at our Generals bragging about this mayhem, this obscene, idiotic pounding of a city without intelligence or sensitivity or perceptions and I felt no shock and awe, but only horror and sadness
and I, by myself, an American living in Israel, who now had dual citizenship of course,
you see, but Americans are never dual, we always leave.  We are only American.

I saw my country as something angry, and violent and dumb and ugly
And you waited in Florida for the WMD, and I watched the story unfold
and there were still no WMD by the time you got back and the Patriot missiles were lowered from their mountain top heights.  And there were still no WMD when paper plans for a bomb were unearthed underneath rose bushes in a scientist's back yard and I felt sorry for the rose bushes
and hoped they were re-planted.
And like my country, you slipped down a notch in my eyes,
Running away from nothing telling me there was danger and leaving me
when it was only you who believed I might die.  Only You.