Poetry Readings.

We cannot win. You would not let us win.
We wear the seminal strain of Original Sin.
We let him die? Could we have staunched His pain?
When it was all precast and also, pre-ordained?
The Romans stole your hearts and minds.
The guilty henchmen got away
but you pinned us as accessories,
in your twisted Passion Play.
For you, the “Occupation” dates from 1967,
though we’ve had our sights on Israel
since Jews ran out of leaven and prior to 1948,
there was no Palestinian Arab State.
We weep for the Arab refugees yet,
when we were burning, deaf to our pleas,
you locked us out of everywhere
and now you denounce us and declare,
that we are nothing, have nothing,
were nothing – and Palestine is theirs.
Their Nakba was our liberation.
Were it not for us, no quest for Nation.
Their strongmen had their own agendas,
almost lost on their avengers who,
in their wild, yet proud resistance,
leave us no doubt:
They’d go the distance.
It was not our leaders but their own,
who had them grovel at their thrones,
to exploit despair and deflect their blame,
so the Jews, instead, should bear their shame.
Because we fear their rampant rage,
they remain in lockdown in their cage,
while you abjure, incite, appease,
to bring us, stiff-necked, to our knees and
induce brash hope in the cruel and rabid
that their reward in store is the City of David.
Let’s face the facts: I am a Jew.
You do not care! You already knew?
And if you’d rather I was not
a conspirator in the Jewish Plot –
then live with it, because I am real,
secular and I will not kneel.
My kid might win the Nobel Prize
but nothing saves me from your lies.