Oh, how I miss you.
                How I miss your hugs.
       How I miss your kisses.
How I miss the days spent with you.
      How I miss how you called me beautiful.
                  How I miss never wanting to let go.
I miss how you never let me forget how much you loved me,
how much you cared, and how much you didn't want to leave.
I'm missing you when I shouldn't,
                  Because missing you is like pouring cement on your heart,
           It becomes heavy and you can't lift it.
   I hate missing you.......... but I love you too much to let you go.

I sit beneath the willow tree
        And cry
I sit beneath the willow tree
        And wonder why
Why do we not see
        The ones who fear
Why do we not pull
        Them near
Why are we so afraid
        To embrace
Why do we not help
        Wipe tears from their face
Man cannot stand alone
        When his heart aches
His fall from this life
        We must break
Do not just stand by
        And stare
Go over and hug
        And show you care
Sit down awhile
        And let him speak
Listen closely as his
        Tale is told
You have helped him
        On his lonely road
You stopped the darkness
        From coming in
You saved a life
        You let light in

It took me far too long to see
That this place was destroying me.
By the time that I could have been free
My home had already come to be
My own private prison cell.
It was almost like my hell.
My realisation came too late
And so it seemed I had to wait
Until my hatred of this place
Would gradually abate.

It seems my home was like a curse,
Serving to only make things worse,
It seemed to amplify my pain
When all I wanted was to get away,
And for this place to leave me be.
So that I might escape and see
What wonders the outside world…
Had in store for me.

Somethings can touch you deep inside
Can make you want to cry,
Emotions that you can't describe
No matter how hard you try,

The touch of a tiny baby's hand
The fragrance of a flower,
The simplicity of a grain of sand
Or the significance of an hour,

To see the twinkling stars at night
Or taste the fresh homemade pie,
Who needs to question how or when
Who needs to know where or why?

To hear the angelus ring at six
To know that evening is nigh,
We know there's got to be
Somebody bigger than you and I.

On the sewage puddles of Sabra and Shatila
there you transferred masses of human beings
worthy of respect
from the world of the living to the world of the dead.
Night after night.
First they shot
then they hung
and finally slaughtered with knives.
Terrified women rushed up
from over the dust hills:
"There they slaughter us
in Shatila."
A narrow tail of the new moon hung
above the camps.
Our soldiers illuminated the place with flares
like daylight.
"Back to the camps, March!" the soldier commanded
the screaming women of Sabra and Shatila.
He had orders to follow,
And the children were already laid in the puddles of waste,
their mouths open,
at rest.
No one will harm them.
A baby can't be killed twice.
And the tail of the moon filled out
until it turned into a loaf of whole gold.
Our dear sweet soldiers,
asked nothing for themselves—
how strong was their hunger
to return home in peace.



Translated from the original Hebrew by Karen Alkalay-Gut.

She is young. Have I the right
Even to name her? Child,
It is not love I offer
Your quick limbs, your eyes;
Only the barren homage
Of an old man whom time
Crucifies. Take my hand
A moment in the dance,
Ignoring its sly pressure,
The dry rut of age,
And lead me under the boughs
Of innocence. Let me smell
My youth again in your hair.

She said
My totem animal
Is an owl
As we saw one
Soar above us
With not a cloud in the sky
And the reflection
Of it’s wingspan—
It’s magnitude—
on the water
reminding me of solitude

and reminding me of an
earlier memory of a
rock path:
carved into the California
mountains and
growing to our
empowerment—
as we all walked calmly
towards the doors
I felt my neck tug my chin upwards
And point my face towards the sky—
and notice how the stars back home
paled in comparison to these
clear ones—
and out of the trees comes
a perfectly white
snow
owl that soared
above our heads

and I looked up and I
gasped and I asked
the people around me to look up
and see the owl above us
and how it was blessing us
and our experience
with our empowerment
and our movement;
I asked them and no one would answer;
They didn’t crane their
Necks to see what I saw
And I only saw the owl that night…

I wonder…
Am I the only one who
saw it fly
Because they refused to look up,
or was I really
the only one
who could see it