Thousands of years ago,
The loving god did decree
A vengeful statement that
Still affects you and me.
He told the loyal Israelis
In the Israel at that time
To go to their neighbors
And commit a huge crime.

It was couched in words
Of an eye for an eye
And lives in infamy
As the millennia go by.
This beloved god by decree
Ordered a massive genocide
Without a future thought or
Concern for those who died.

“**** all of them, even infants!”
That’s what they say he said
And even up until today
There are mounting dead.
A peek back at history
We watch the bodies burn
And know for certain
They have never learned.

The scariest part of all is
That these were all denizens
Of a timeless middle-eastern war
Now a cause by US citizens.
They have fought and murdered
For thousands of years on end.
So, why do we join in and fight
And send our beloved children?

Can’t we just agree on a course
To wash our nation’s hands of it
And recognize this madness
As a political bottomless pit?
It has never been righteous
Or easy to understand
How this war goes on over
This one small patch of land,
Fueled by religious hypocrisy
Written in a year that is labeled BCE?

Eyes do not meet
But I still see
Lips are sealed
But still I speak.

I listen to
Your quiet voice
And I inhale
Your scent long gone.

I pray for you
Each night I do
I cannot touch you
But I am holding you.

You Gentiles,
Unwashed, unclean,
Prepare for war,
Come vent your spleen.

Beat the plowshares into swords,
Your harvest tools to mighty weapons,
Feel the surging doom and think you strong,
Gather  in the Valley of Decision,
The Valley of Jehoshaphat,
Where stand we all for judgment.

The Sun, the Moon, go dark;
The Stars remove their shine,
And full earth shakes beneath
The coming doom,
Before the lasting Peace
Descends on Israel.

He walks up to me and says, “bro if you think about it, Israel is like racist”
Immediately the urge to pass my fist down his throat comes upon me
But, we’re at school, so I decided to bite my tongue instead of his
He continues to try and tell me everything that is wrong about my home, my home, my home
After his first words, my mind goes into a flashback to my home:

Serenity
Steel and rubber wheels, trudging along earth’s edge
The wail of a young infant, piercing the atmosphere like a pin drop in silence
The pop in my temples
Pressure on my skull
They both splice my silver-lined thoughts and urk my discomfort
The dry air strategically carves cracks onto the surface of my lips so that they are no longer an instrument of communication, but solely a burden on my comfort

All components of hell build walls around me
But serenity knocks at my door, I am finally home

“Dude are you listening to me?”
I awake from my coma, to the pure sound of ignorance
Here stands a boy trying to tell me my muse I use to live by is a lie
Here stands a white privileged boy who thinks he knows the answers to the world because he can read a ******* text book

I regained consciousness..
He says, “Anything to say, bro?”
I thought to myself, I can stand here for hours and try to explain
Who the hell are you to waste my time


I lost the switch somewhere during the conversation
The moment in which black changed to white was blurred
But I know one thing
I know one thing better than I know my own soul
I know that the world was serene when I touched ground at my home

I stood in front of him and started to begin laughing
Each chuckle was enough to make the world dance on stilts
It crawled up to every nook and down through each crevice of the room
The understanding he gained realizing I would not let his ignorance get to me
I stood there and laughed, I had no reason not to
To be alive was a reason to laugh
To survive the persecution of my people, was a reason to laugh
To survive the countless pennies being thrown at me, was a reason to laugh
To survive being told you’re a jew, you’re not good enough, was a reason to laugh
To survive being called a ***** ******* jew, was a reason to laugh
To survive being thrown to the ground and called a ****, was a reason to laugh
To get back up and RISE, was a reason to smile.

Two thousand years
Regressing past the cross
Lead bites bitter as bronze
Gaza rages

The brimstone and fire you promised
You delivered
Apostle bound crusader
Jewish Lucifer

"Two dead fieldmice, rigid as boards,
"Two suppurating corpses of foot-and-mouth sheep,
"Two fat vultures, their gobs choked with putrid carrion,
"Two flea-infested, plague-ridden rats,
"Two rabid wolves, drooling jowls dripping with lethal froth,
"Two cancerous wildcats, eyes shrieking out in agony,
"Two squashed pet dogs, breed unknown,
"Two mangy, skinny, louse-covered buffalo,
"Two ****-sodden pigs rotten with unspeakable internal disorders...."
The list seemed endless as each page revealed a fresh useless horror.

Noah turned to his supplier, the swarthy Ike, and said:
"Vot for you should bring me this load of dreck already, you putz?
"******* like this I don't vant for my Ark, yet!
"Better quality I can get from Rueben Rosenberg any day, already"

"Rueben's shut on Saturdays, my dear" said Ikey,
Looking a bit uncomfortable and sweating under his skullcap.

Everyone’s sleepwalking through city square
It’s twelve fifty seven
And seventy families have bled black against Israel’s rockets

Come Sunday morning
The drunks in my hometown
Will be too hungover to recognise their own faces
While Palestinians across the world
Will have to sort through the bones of dead relatives

This country was built on colonial empathy
Freedom from suffering through self-absorbed apathy

We’re all sewn to our seats
Caring for nothing