If G-d Had Eyes

In memory of the heroes who stared G-d straight in the eye.

If G-d had eyes.

What would He see.

Would He see goodness in blood.

Or darkness like me.

If G-d had lips.

Would He cry with His sons.

If His daughters could see Him.

Would He let His tears come.

If G-d had a head.

Would He hang it in shame.

Would He regret what He’s done.

Or would He call it a game.

If G-d had ears.

I’d give voice to my angst.

Even my silence would scream.

And the Heavens would shake.

If G-d had a face.

I’d do nothing but glare.

If truth spilled from evil.

I’d believe He was there.

If G-d has a heart.

Let it be aching.

If thousands have shook.

Trust His is breaking.

My Israel Escapades ;)))))

http://thisiswhyiloveisrael.blogspot.com/

Gods of Self-Deception

Maybe you’re invisible. Maybe your vanishing act was caste.
Maybe you’re a ghost in your own home, a stranger moving by too fast.

Maybe every torch you’ve lit extinguished. And maybe no one’s ever cared.
Maybe you’ve disappeared in the eyes of the world. Maybe you were never even there.

No. Each breath you take is given. Each move you make is watched.
The slightest contraction of the chest is whispered, granted to beat and permitted to throb.

So maybe you’ve got holes. Vibrant flaws that scream and sear.
Maybe the condescending whistles really are, the only things you hear.

Maybe you’ve been begging. But no one’s let you in.
Maybe you’ve been playing this game forever. But He’s never let you win.

Still every fall is measured. Every scar you’ve razorred, mapped.
Every hurt has been determined. Every tear that's fallen, kept.

Every smile is carved and painted. Each cry you sound, composed. Every
lump in your throat, created. And the gun in your hand exposed.

So maybe you really are just as small as you imagine. Become a servant to perfection.
Maybe you’re really nothing but you’re image. Fallen to the gods of self-deception.

No. Every tear you’ve shed’s been counted. Every word you uttered, framed. Every thought you’ve thought is written. For, every moment G-d repeats your name.

To Kill a Scorpion

To kill a scorpion,
Might thaw the venom in your veins.
And maybe revive the desire to play,
With the God we caste away.

First revel in the chase.
Then the comedown from the high.
Lace your fingers in the clouds.
And peel down the sky.

The culmination of the world,
Is jumping off the edge.
You’re never high enough,
If you’re still clutching on the ledge.

So first revel in the chase.
Then the comedown from the high.
Lace your fingers in the clouds.
And peel down the sky.

***

Cheshvan’s astronomical sign is Scorpio. Scorpions are cold-blooded, and symbolize indifference. Apathy. The challenge of Cheshvan is to revive our desire to serve G-d. To soar the G-dly skies.

The very purpose for soaring is, contrast to popular belief, the comedown afterwards. To drag the G-dliness from your trip down with you as you fall back down.

If you’ve been soaring and are still looking for a spiritual high, you are not high enough; you need to fly some more.

The sign that you’ve achieved G-d is that you’re ready to fall again.

***

If you don't truly understand the above...I hardly do either.

Fearing Fear

This is going to confuse you. I'm roughly certain that it will since, it confuses me. Fear confuses me in general. I hate fear. I fear fear. Throughout my life I’ve found fear to be the most powerful, motivating emotion to ever kiss me.

At one time, I feared the worst, because the worst kept proving its existence. Now, oddly, I fear that it will never go back to the way it was.

The way it was, wasn’t how it was supposed to be. She wasn’t supposed to get hit by a car or fall into two year long coma. I wasn’t supposed to tweak things in my life that didn’t want tweaking or become the teenage equivalent of Manis Freedman (forgive me if I am totally flattering myself).

But she did. And I did.

Now its been two years. And its gone. The inspiration. The horrible metaphors. The ridiculously clichéd manner in which my thoughts involuntarily formed into the words I swore to God I’d never say.

And now I am actually jealous of myself. Jealous of the way I once let myself think. Of the things I once let myself do. I now covet the days when I actually believed hard enough to let sound like that. And the times that I didn’t care how trite or preachy I came off.

I once feared the days that fear found me. Now I fear, I’ll never find those days again.

This is what I wrote almost two years back.



Ps. Israel is awesome. I just can't sleep. Therefore I started thinking about weird things like fear.

Are You There Internet...It's Me, Mushka

An article i wrote for a teen mag a while back.

I can’t help but laugh when I reminisce of the days when internet was a sacred luxury. When those fifteen minutes on CompuServe were simply the greatest fifteen moments of my life. Correction- greatest ten and a half moments. Since I had to deduct the four and a half minutes it took for the computer to suffer a seizure, while emitting nightmarish sounds I could only assume to be aliens invading cyberspace.

It’s safe to say we’ve evolved a great deal since then. Our computers have been cured of the convulsions, we’re getting our full fifteen minutes of Tetris and we’re Skyping with people across the country. We can fold the entire world wide freaking web into the back pocket of our jeans. For God's sake.

But we’re not impressed. We’re not wowed or enchanted. This is life as we know it. We can’t imagine the world any other way. No, we won't imagine the world any other way. We’ve been shocked into a syndrome where if it’s not nano, it’s colossal, and if it’s not high speed, it’s painstakingly slow. Email is the new letter, text is the new phone call and writing on the wall is the new Hallmark card.

We’re all so wrapped up in cyberspace that we’ve actually built ourselves a home inside it. I live at 212 Exeter Rd but you’ll reach me far sooner if you go to my address in Cyberspace; My Name @ Facebook.com. Leave me a message in my inbox, send me a virtual holiday card, graffiti my wall. You’re invited to my home any old time you’d like sans the polite knock. Flip through my photo albums for your entertainment and should you still feel bored, my journal is available for midday reading. It’s labeled “Notes” if you’d like to leave your comments on the intimate details of my life.

Pull down the Info. tab and you’ll learn that my hobbies are shopping, dancing, and riding rollercoasters. I have green eyes and black hair.

That’s me.

But the more I think about it, the more I have to wonder, is that really me? Is that all? One picture frozen in time, that stares at my 312 friends and begs them to confirm my existence? Are we all so truly single faceted that we can condense all eighteen or so years of our lives into two paragraphs titled, “About Me”?

Has life really become a competition to see who has more Facebook friends or whose life out-parties the rest? Have we all become Snow White’s evil stepmother, peering into our computer screen demanding, “Is my profile the fairest of them all?” Has it come to the point where we actually need the confirmation of our peers to tell us we’re good enough?

Living in an alternate universe where our birthday gifts can be copied and pasted, an irritating friend can be deleted with just a swift click of the mouse, and our knowledge of current events comes from a place called “News Feed”, begs the question:

Are we, in the innocent name of socializing, ultimately losing touch with what really makes us click?

It’s almost as if we’ve built the past few years of our lives on something that we can fit into our purse. We’ve stored away feelings in folders, friends in web pages, and memories in boxes. We’ve forgotten that our identities are not marked by the way others see us but by the way we see ourselves. We’ve forgotten that the person who looks back at us from the bright LCD monitor is not the real us but a pretense that parades around with our face. And we’ve forgotten that Cyberspace is a galaxy far from Reality.

Oh sure we’ve been warned about sites like Facebook. Of the stalkers and predators and gross old creeps. Yes, the dangers of Facebook have been relayed to tops of heads and eyes rolled so far backward, they’re counting the cells in their brains. These alarms have been playing in our heads for so long that we’ve never contemplated the possibility of a more profound variety of danger. A type of danger that threatens that part of us that no Norton or firewall can protect. And if we’d take the time to consider the parts of ourselves we’ve sacrificed in the name of “socializing”, we’d come to appreciate the real danger in association with cyberspace’s parallel universe; the predators that steal our souls without us so much as noticing.

So notice this: When stalking your colleagues, chatting with friends, and posting your Israel pics, bear in mind: Comments are just comments. Pictures don’t have mouths. And you don’t get to keep the virtual gifts you get for your birthday. Facebook is not real life. And really any place where you can throw a sheep at someone ought not to be taken too seriously.

Log out, click back to reality.

***

Taste of Forbidden

***

They said, rebellion’s in our blood. The lure for forbidden pumping through our veins.
Its breath so close, you can hear it breathe. Only a whisper away.

I swore I could unlock my soul at anytime. I swore it didn’t matter.
I swore selling myself wasn’t a crime. I believed I was too strong to shatter.

They taught me the art of hurting, the people I loved most.
I learned to silence the guilt with a smile and a toast.

But the taste was ever recurrent. I could always taste it on my tongue.
I could taste the difference between good and bad. The flavor between right and wrong.

Every year I’d promise. And every year I’d break.
Every year I’d bow to sin and then call those sins mistakes.

Now I have to wonder. As I pray. And the shadows run by fast.
If I put a finger to my lips, could I fool the demons of the past.

And still waters run so deep; could I ever really forget.
Could I erase the memories, one by one, numb them with regret

When it’s all over, I won’t ask, will my sins be lost and snuffed.
When the dust settles. The question will be: will forgiveness be enough.

.

Sundaes & Rock

I like ice cream sundaes
And nighttime in the park
I like cherry slurpees
And rooftops after dark

I love speeding on side streets
And cranking up the bass
I like Britney Spears
And bands like 3 Days Grace

I'm the type of girl
Who wears boots even when it's hot
All those things you think I am
Are all the things I'm not

My favorite song
Is The Little Bird Is Calling
Secretly I'm in love
With the initial sense of falling

I love karaoke
Even though I can't sing
I love running in circles
Redbull gives me wings

I love being a kid
I dream of Never-Never
If I could, I totally would
I'd be seventeen forever