Can I hear you?

Can I hear you?
Am I doing it right?
Am I doing enough?
What's the end?
When's the start?
How much longer?
How much farther?

Adonai s'fatai tiftach ufi yagid t'hilatechah

Good and evil

It'd be nice if good and evil
Were clear as night and day

Killers
With claws for hands
Horns on heads
And hollow eyes

Vs.

Shining eyes
Full hearts
A generosity of spirit
Rippling outward in circles

But sometimes they're much
Less clear or distinguishable

And I don't mean
The trusted figure
Who deceives
The holy man
Who abuses
The counsellor
Who betrays

Something else even
Closer still

Two voices, together
Singing a duet
Linked in harmony

Two childhood friends, together

One borrowing
The other's idea

If evil cannot understand good
If the light shines in the darkness
And the darkness comprehendeth it not

Then the danger of evil
Is that good does not comprehend it
Either
Good reaches out
Because it's natural
To do so

Good can raise up evil
Hoist it on its shoulders
At a concert on the stage
On a sandbar in the ocean
Because it believes
In sharing its strength
Because it wants
Others to swim

It doesn't understand
Why someone would sap
Would hoard
Would bleed dry
Someone else

Good gives
As an instinct
As a principle
And in doing so
Exposes itself

Because you can't give fully
In solid armour

While evil
Cloaked
In the fairest of disguises
(Which is suffering
For what does good desire more
Than to salve true suffering)
Inhales
Waxes
Bloats
Until at last it sheds the cloak
And good sees what it has wrought

But what is there to be done
But try again
And this time
Give and receive

Three pages from a comic book I wrote

Short Story I wrote on my phone

Yitzchak

1.

And I

Who know not who I am

Who know now more than ever

Am Yitzchak

Al Tishlach Yadecha El Ha-Na-ar Ve’al Ta-ase Lo Me-u-ma

A blessing

I know it is

But I’m exhausted

So many lives in thirty-six years

Many more than double chai

A kid wide eyed

Who believes unshakeably in good

With his father in the sun

Reading Charlotte’s Web

Rolling in the ocean

And laughing

With his father watching the Jays

Win in 1992

Alone in his room

Reading Listening

At 15 or 16

Pushing Pushing towards something he knows is there

In the car on the way home from school

With his dad and a friend

He hears a song

And he hears it differently than them

It’s joy

It’s too strong

It’s bursting through the windows

And he should burst through with it

So now you know…who gets mystified

But you can’t live on a starburst

Who gets mystified…

And the colours the colours exploding in song

The songs exploding in colour

If I should be short on words and long on things to say

Lent to finish her

All you’ll be you are today

 The starburst has colours!

(I used to like that gum)

Moving through life and the starburst recedes

(You can’t live there)

And it’s fine

But sometimes there’s darkness instead

Which

Where did it come from?

From pushing the starburst down and away?

From…

Full of light

So from where the darkness

--------------------

The self-immolater

When did it start?

When where why

---------------------

2.

Pushing Pushing Pushing

It’s there but what

Sometimes panicking

That I might not find it

That I might lose the tools I need to get there

My eyes my ears my head

Above all my head

That I might blow it!

If I could just open myself up

To the world

Fully

Completely

Everyone would see

What’s inside

How I feel

For everyone

And it’s love

And now I have room to spread my wings

And my message is of love…

But you can’t crack yourself open to the world

And live to tell the tale

Besides

You can’t love everyone

You have to love some people more than others

You just…

3.

And where is God

Is He here?

In a bedroom, in Toronto, at the end of a millenium

Where I’m Reading Listening Pushing Pushing Pushing

To find what?

Is He in Israel, the Holy Land

When I’m 17

Where I’m panicked, crying, calling home

That my centre will not hold

(But I want to open it up!)

That my eyes my ears my head will fail

And when I’m 17 in Israel

And they ask me about God

I say “I’m not sure.

But maybe He’s in laughter

And love, and joy.”

I meant it!

(Let me open up!)

----------------------------

And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.

-----------------------------

4.

And I want the peaceful road

To end how it started, in peace

But I’m afraid it ends in a collision 

An apocalypse

A telos I don’t understand 

I’m terrified

Could I have been anyone else

Why am I me

Swept on towards a terror 

If there’s nothing beyond 

Just now 

It doesn’t matter that much

It’s only life 

But if there is beyond

After

True and False

Forever

It matters so much 

I can’t understand how much it matters

I beseech Thee by Name

Forever is the most frightening of all words

I can’t condemn anyone to forever

Only bless

Anyway, put one foot in front of the other for today 

Not forever 

Yet 

—————————

Shuva Israel ad Adonai

Ki Chashalta B’Avonecha

—————————

And after Malachi prophecy ceased in Israel 

—————————

At 17 panicked in Israel 

At 19 panicked in Halifax

At 21 panicked in Gravenhurst

I would like a break! 

At 18 panicked in Europe
Following around a band
A sound
A man who is not a man
Whose voice lodged itself
In my head 

Whose music
Which I took for a wellspring
Is death

And I followed the sound
Mistaking it for strength
But I knew underneath
Even then
What it was

And was I trying to stop it
Stop him

I couldn't

------------------------------------

Mi Anochi?

9 dead
In Denmark
And did I know
It was coming

I did
Somehow

And when I read the news
I panicked again
When I wanted to weep

One definition of panic
Is the inability to grieve

-------------------------------------

The devil tricks you
Into rooting for him
Into believing he is your rock
Into needing him
To survive

And in doing so obscures you
From God

--------------------------------------

5 months after Denmark
I was in Seattle
Cheering the devil on
The man who is not a man
With a friend who was not a friend
And the prince of lies perverted the truth in front of us 
And told us he would carry on
And we cheered

Well
No more
I carried on too
And I am here
At last
With the truth

------------------------------------ 

And the 9 from Denmark
Who the devil murdered
And then called to by name
As if to comfort

I call to now
Alongside Anna
With intent
In grief
In love
In anger
In mourning
In hope
In prayer

---------------------------------

Some easier years after that

Except the immolater still building on the side 

But there’s nothing to do there but brush it aside 

While it’s building 

Then finally a shattering

Long foreseen

Long foretold?

(Not by me)

Suffering Hurt and Rage

More Rage than I thought was in me

A trap, a snare 

Set by the snake 

The devil himself

But beside me the angel

The guardian

I find him

In headphones

On records

Onstage

With a guitar 

Who am I to him?

Mi anochi?

My father at the kotel

Praying for a child

Me at the kotel 

Praying for the world 

(I meant it!)

5.

More Rage than I thought was possible

Rage in pictures and speech bubbles 

With the devil by my side, urging me on

Softly

And right to the edge I went 

To the edge

But not over

I chose life

Chose love

Thank God 

And one martyr

Did she? Did I?

What she went through

I can’t 

There is evil

More than I thought possible 

What she suffered

Yet she’s safe now

In the after 

She has to be 

She must be 

Which means there’s forever

Which is love

But forever means 

I can’t today

Not yet 

I hate this man

Who hurt her like that

And I hate what he is in the world.

6.

Anna I’m sorry

Anna I wish

I wish I had been clear all along

With clear love

And clean hate

But it was mixed up

I hated myself

Then those I love

And I expelled it

Forcibly

And in doing so

Did I?

No.

(Not seen outside wartime.

I pray to God you were mostly asleep.)

It does no good to send myself down that road.

Even at the worst, in my darkest

There was a struggle towards light.

7.

Now what?

I’ve touched so much dark

I can’t do another 40 years.

I can’t do another 10!!!

Am Yitchak

A blessing

I know it is

But I’m exhausted

What’s wrong with just Ike?!

8.

At nine years old

Invited a friend
Who was not a friend

On a family trip

To a family house

On the ocean

And what happened there?

How does evil transmit?

How does it jump?

How do you know?

Just two kids

I was sad when he left

He was counting the cars til his Dad arrived

And I was sad

About what?

Did I know something about him then?

Do people who are bad

Know they’re…

What’s in him?

-----------------------

Anyway we made it back

25 years later

Without him

That has to count for something

------------------------

And what does it mean for me to know

What I know

Where do I go with this

Why do I carry this

------------------------

9.

Do I dare disturb the universe?

Do I dare to eat a peach?

I guess I’ve made my choice

And I can live with it

Things looked good

And I could not have pushed

Myself over the edge

But that would have been

A failure of courage

Of honesty

Of truth

Anyhow

I’m not sure I had a choice

Seven years so far since I made the choice(?)

To disturb the universe

At full tilt

5 or so years of horror

isolation and despair

like I’ve never felt

and confusion

and a couple of years of

something else

Still lots of confusion

But more love than I’ve ever felt

And sometimes

Deeper peace

---------------------

I am grateful

For beautiful memories

Which still have the strength to surface

Atop the pond

At the family house

On the ocean

(The same year? After he left?

Later? Earlier?)

In the ocean

Rolling

Myself

And certain

Sure

That it’s good to be alive

------------------------