June

Names are arbitrary; conquering power's influence of calendars; Lunar, Gregorian, (from the 1582 when the Pope Gregory XIII instated 365 days a year plus an extra day every four years (except in years divisible by 100 but not by 400)). But the name of June, meaning 'young' after the Roman goddess Juno, is still carried by months and women, still infatuating students with graduation and warmth of school-less days, still calling bridegrooms and their betrothed into covenantal unions, farmers into planting, celebrations of liberation and flags.

When I think of you, June, I think of warming days, when it's not too hot yet and nights are still cool, I think of biking to the pool and stopping by Kmart for junk food, I think of all the fantastic plans and promises the summer holds, of re-reading messages in year books and recycling finished notebooks. 

Oh June, when I think of you I think of the land, and now in a far-off climate I don't know who you are anymore, you're just a name, just a memory, a flickering idea of hopeful youth holding great expectations that were never burdensome. Holding hope now is a tricker exercise, it's weight becomes heavier unexpectedly, the unrealized and not yet grow taunt with stinging doubt. 

Oh, June. Here you are watermelons and peaches, lemons and grapes ripening on the vine, fields turning brown, the beginning of waiting for the winter rains. I wanted to write a simple haiku, an ode to the beauty of June, and I found the ageless grief instead. Can you, will you, lift my head? 

You always remind me

Never far from my thoughts, a circuitous route with a dead end of false comfort; 

    Such strong hands, supple form, deep eyes and I am awash again with such longing. 

God, my end, Omega, this temple is temporary and انا نسى مرارا

Not always, but often, enough that I wonder whose mind I have, the one of promise or the one of flesh. To persist decades in a "not yet, yet to be" escalates precariously and only by divine intervention is there a relent from toppling. 

    Collapsing inwardly into a deeper surrender, the seed that died keeps dying. 

The hope born again to keep arising. 

The call to prayer

 What if the call to prayer is a call to bleed? 

-Pete Greig, Red Moon Rising 

Privilege

What does the watcher see?

Another betrayal, another hillside occupied

It's pain, keys and deeds nothing more than playthings, monopoly money 

Fear turns to hatred, dividing

Succumbing to a lure for backyards and "security" 

What does the nation-state say about purity? 

Ethnic, cultural, lingual 

Still, how am I to blame? This land has no people. This land is not built upon. It's empty, it's waiting, it's calling for its Sons. (Nevermind the village ruins under the forest, etched on the plain.) 

What does the watcher see?

Insistence and weariness 

Against the unremitting mountain of privilege

Privilege is never neutral, there's always a sacrifice 

Privilege is never given up, it's always strengthened

Privilege is inherited and blinding, always dehumanizing 

"Like those others, I had been trying to find the easy life of blindness to pain." Elias Chacour (p.223 "Blood Brothers") 

More than Solomon

Strewn petals always seem extravagant, 

An indulgence,

A red carpet invitation to a premier of being present, 

Alive and awake. 

The overflow tomb

I'm buried in an overflowing tomb, suffocating under the lies made by heroes on the edge of madness finalizing their conquest of cleansing (but just one more)- one more village left, one more enemy to vanquish, one more WMD, one more mother to bereft; 

The modern retelling of history casting long and politically correct shadows onto crusader temples, turn left and you'll find the Roman Colosseum, the ruins of the rampages and despicable (unspeakable) sacrifices, turn right and you'll find the wells and the tombs, the ancient names renamed after each conquest. 

Past the stones piled up covering dishonorable women, the graves marking the casualties of tribal feuds, revenge killings;

Turn around and remember at the memorials of sons killed by rockets, drones, militants, terrorists, settlers/occupiers/commanders/chiefs/generals/presidents. The carnage of knives and bombs and guns, the us and them, the endless blame;

The weariness of cycles, of shellings, shelters beyond capacity, the funerals disrupted, the death on all sides erupted, fear corrosive, claiming, naming;

Who can break a narrative, create a new story that captures truth with beauty and never boasts or idealizes or blacklists as savages, but names, like the speaker for the dead, a deep knowing and telling, of what is and was and what will be, a new vision, a future, a city, a King. 

Damascus

Scandal of cohesion 
Promises and proclamations sung to 
Temper the rubble 
Ravaged and revenged 
Wholly recompensed; the word fulfilled 

Glorious grace
Unbounded mercy
Unfounded and unleashed 
Upon a city Named
“My joy is in her” 
(Isaiah 17, 19; Jeremiah 49)