There's good reason
Why they say I'm
Madly in love.
Look at my behavior.
Sweating, palpitating,
Shortness of breath,
Light-headedness,
Clean shaven,
Clean underwear.
This isn't normal
Male behavior.
And then I repeat it,
Thinking the outcome
Will be different.

You hate my poems
You say they take me from you
that they're pointless
a waste of time
maybe you're right.
You read them,
just the words as they fall,
and say you get nothing
just syllables.
I have lost count
of the sighs and eyerolls,
the you have no talents,
they sit in a memory box
along with the times you've asked me to stop.
Stop.
Just like that.
Stop pouring myself onto paper,
Stop looking for beauty in darkness,
Stop healing.
You prefer me broken, fragile, dependant,
the girl you took from nowhere to god knows where
a once pretty, broken thing
to hang silently from your arm
while you talk proudly of the soul that you saved.
You fear that my writing will end us.
I fear that my stopping will end me.

Dear people, what have you done to the dream?
I stood with so much pride
As the votes were counted one by one,
My heart burst with love as the exiles returned
And my soul was fired with the desire
To fulfil our destiny and return the land
Once again into an oasis of hope.

But what have you done to the dream?
Where is the love the unity and hope?
What have you done to my dream when your sons
Who serve in the army fear that their bullet will strike down
An angry stone wielding youth so full of hate because
Your hearts have become hardened to his needs.

I have walked this land in my dreams
And have seen what we could have had
A  heaven on earth, but what have we got?
A land so full of intolerance not only of enemy against enemy
But of brother against brother.
Money has become G-d, and the banks, temples of worship.
No more is it what can I give, but rather what can I get.

I have walked this land in the guise of an immigrant-
And have taken the 'rights' given to me.
I have walked this land in the guise of an old person,
And have felt the fear of being unwanted and unloved.
And  I have closed my  heart,
And have lost my ability to give love freely.
I have walked  this land in the guise of boys and girls
Who have borne the responsibility of the army
But have mourned my lost youth.
I  have closed myself to my sensitive heart .
And I have walked this land in the guise of men
And women burdened by the system.
The path seems an uphill fight to survive.
I have walked this land in the guise of a politician ,
Offering the solution - only if done my way.
To survive I have wheeled and dealed
And have almost forgotten how to make miracles happen
It is only when crisis strikes and I forget myself,
And remember my brothers and sisters
That I go within and draw from the fountain of strength,
And get a glimpse, once again of what
We as a nation of brothers and sisters can create.