AT THE DOOR OF SLEEP

Yesterday evening I had been up

for twenty-nine hours

when I arrived at the swimming

beach half-awake,

walked down the pier

and threw myself into the water.

When I surfaced,

I was two-thirds awake,

Sun perhaps blazed

brighter over the hills,

the lingering sounds

of summer going silent

heard clearer,

but I was at the door of sleep

still and it was ajar,

open into hours dark

as the enclosing water

that reached down

into the muddy bottom

evoking the depths

of our being

only the sleep releases

into dreams

that tide us

into unborn dawn.

15.-23.07.2026

INTO BLEAK WINTER

The summer two-thirds gone,

nights getting darker,

longer, light

soon again

a precious commodity

running away through

our fingers

into bleak winter.

22.-23.07.2026

RAMI RUBIN

I have watched Israel's wars in the Middle East

almost as long as I can remember,

still remember news from Lebanon in 1983,

and a hasbara troll account Rami Rubin

tells me to learn history, not watch Tik-Tok.

Seven years in university reading history,

fourty-three years watching Israel

invade, occupy and murder,

and here I am, being lectured

by fake accounts whose words

my countrymen instinctively believe,

these countrymen 

who don't know the difference

between Hamas and Fatah, West Bank

and Gaza, and don't care

that they don't know,

nor care about the genocide

that goes on butchering entire families

erased from existence without survivors

because they are told by bots and trolls

it doesn't exist. May they experience

all that they support.                                                                                                       0   

22.06.-23-.06.-23.07.2026

TURNING SEASONS

Long sorrow blankets the world

deep in its white mourning,

and when brief joy comes

and covers the land in green,

and Sun is supreme in the blue,

quickly chill grief rides in the air

and withers the grass and the leaf,

brings the moaning nights

when cold stars twinkle

between the streaming clouds,

and the first snowflake falls

and pierces the fading heart.

22.07.2026

HOW THE WORLD IS RUN, FOR GENOCIDAIRES

Israel murders each day

a dozen people still

and runs a pogrom

every night,

but this doesn't matter,

as Israel's supporters -

when not mocking

its dead and wounded victims -

declare they are afraid

because genocide is opposed,

that they are tired

because freedom

is demanded for survivors.

And this matters,

not the burning villages,

the exterminated families,

the one hundred

and twenty-thousand dead,

because this is how the world

is run - for genocidaires.

22.07.2026

AND IF YOU CAN'T TRUST GENOCIDAIRES, WHO CAN YOU TRUST?

Israel murdered an entire family

in Gaza, again, parents

and four children,

their home bombed

when they were asleep,

and the BBC

does propaganda

for the genocidaires,

as usual,

telling its global audience

that everything is well

because Israel

has said it was

"targeting a member of Hamas"

during a ceasefire.

22.07.2026

NOT ENOUGH

One writes

when one can't live

as one should,

words compensation

for the life

not lived.

09.-11.07.2026

SHOUTING AT THE DIGITAL AGORA

All night up

shouting

at the digital agora

and only a tiny bit

of what needed

to be shown

and told

is shown

and told

but hoping

for a thrown snowball

turning into avalanche,

a butterfly

fluttering its wings

ending up

causing a hurricane.

14.-18.07.2026

TODAY IN GAZA

Today Israel has killed 

at least eleven people

in Gaza, possibly twelve.

Even without new attacks

(little hope of that)

the death toll is likely to rise

as there are

critically wounded

and surviving 

doctors and nurses

can do only so much,

lacking everything.

Miracles are not

possible. Miracle-workers

need their tools.

Those are denied

for them, by the genocidaires

and those who stand

and gaze at

the slaughter 

and allow it all.

They say something

should be done

and they act -

to keep the slaughter going

on and say there is nothing

else they could do.

14.-15.-18.07.2026

THE GUILTY

The taiga burns, smoke

reaches over the Great Lakes

from Ontario,

envelopes the city.

Through smoke

the Sun blazes malevolently,

a cyclopean eye on the sky

in your photograph.

There are people

responsible for this.

Few if any of them will be inhaling

the smoke from the burning forests.

It's not their villages

that burn either,

beyond the wide waters.

It's always others paying the price.

They will gaze at bright,

benevolent Sun

from the windows

of their corporate jets,

high above the smoke,

like gods above the fires

separate, uncaring,

unconnected to humanity.

18.07.2026

WHAT DO THE PEOPLE UP ON THE SUNDECK CARE?

A morning

and I have been up

sixteen hours

not fixing

what is

broken

but shouting

yelling

that our

shared boat

Earth

is leaking

from bullet-holes

beyond counting

and water in

in the bilge

is bloody,

but what

do the people

up on the sundeck

care?

14.07.2026

ON THE SHORE OF THE BALTIC SEA

As seas go, it's not much.

It has been a mere lake

several times.

But today you could believe,

watching the open sea,

bereft of islands,

as it sends wave

after wave

to break at the rocks

of the shore

that it goes on and on,

expanding

beyond the knowledge

on the maps,

beyond the curvature of the Earth.

As seas go, it's not much.

But it evokes imagination

and imagination breaks its bonds,

the bonds of the sea,

the sea that breaks your own bonds,

briefly, as you stand on its shore,

gazing at the horizon

that sends wave after wave

to break at your feet

as life sends

you over the expanse of years

to break on an unknown shore.

13.07.2026

GOING TO SWIM AT HALF PAST NINE ON A JULY EVENING

Diving into dark water

at long July sunset,

surfacing

swimming

where the spear

of the sun ends,

into calm,

serene waters

of the mind.

13.07.2026

AS LONG AS THEY FLOW

Love comes 

with broken wings,

a stricken fowl

brought down from the sky.

Mend the wings

and up it goes,

up in the air whirling,

vanishing in the sun.

Lust comes 

earthbound, flightless 

one from birth;

wings evolution's stumps

it won't ride the swift currents

of the air, vanishing in the sun -

it will ride the currents 

of the blood as long as they flow.

12.07.2026

LEDA III

A god swims into your life

all arrogant, divine beauty,

to create a legend,

leaving a wake of white feathers

to float away with the streaming

waters, 

            time flowing

towards the catastrophes

begetted

               from your own,

a path covered with eggshells

to the tumbling walls,

altars stained with blood,

history being made,

and women to be raped

and enslaved, 

                        sacrificed

in every meaning of the word

by men with plumages

on their helmets.

12.07.2026

KING'S CHAPEL, BOSTON

In neat, arranged rows

given order by a later era,

the headstones guide

the visitors past their worn

names and underneath

the moving feet lie

separated, scattered the bones

of that other town of wood

and brick and rare stone,

not the stone and concrete

and glass of this later city,

city marooned in a nation

living its own witch-hunts.

02.-12.07.2026

SOUNDSCAPE

I'm awake after a day of sleeping,

rain comes down fast and hard,

a landscape made by sound

into a watery realm

even before I step into the window,

open it and put out my hand

to feel the raindrops

on my palm.

04.07.2026

AS I LAY IN BED, LISTENING

Rain in late morning

mere sound

to senses yet

my mind makes

a landscape out of that sound,

dark green

and watery,

expanding

into memories.

02.-05.07.2026

SWIMMING ON SUMMER EVENINGS

In dark evening waters

the mind floats

with every stroke

the body takes

free as the gull

shrieking,

wheeling

above.

02.07.2026

FLOATING ALONE

Floating alone 

in the shaft of the Sun

piercing evening's 

dark waters

your mind 

becomes liquid,

serene, calm.

03.07.2026

AS SUDAN'S EL OBEID IS IN DANGER OF FALLING TO RSF/JANJAWEED

If you just shout loud

and often enough

"Slava Ukraini!"

and you keep your eyes

solely on Ukraine

and your hands on your ears

and keep shouting

"Slava Ukraini!"

until your voice gives away

you can ignore multiple

ongoing genocides,

or so it seems to work for many.

05.07.2026