Slogans Are Easy
November 3, 2019
We can never atone for the billions
spent on dark dreams
sawed through with ease,
No Comment
Damnatio Memoriae
October 6, 2019
To resist through nonviolence, yes—
I’ll do what the data says is wise.
But to love is another matter:
I may wave the flag, but I am no patriot;
Is it not better to burn what they betray?
Waiting in Line to Donate Blood After A Mass Shooting
August 4, 2019
This is where we come together,
Not before but after:
The blood already drained,
We refill it;
We never lack for blood to give.
When is it too Late?
July 20, 2019
Last week 1,000 Jews and allies
Surrounded ICE Headquarters in protest
Chanting Never Again
Like a shofar sounding pain
From Auschwitz to Gulag to Mount Sinjar
March
April 13, 2019
Three Marches have come and gone
Like a public bus come to my street
Before giving up and moving on.
Each time I’ve seen them through windows
Fogged with the steam of my growing rage,
Reichstag
February 3, 2019
It does not matter who lit the flame
That burned the Reichstag down,
Only that it burned and so few
Considered what cremation means
To those who long for proper burial.
The Machinery of the State
July 29, 2018
A relentless South Texas wind poses impossible questions,
Flaps the smirking flags until they are upturned,
Mists the mown grass with evil’s sputum,
Ripples the lone unarmed security guard’s shirt
As he waves concentration camp employees
Can Love Trump Hate?
July 22, 2018
This is an oversimplification, but one way to think about the Civil Rights Movement, especially from the mid-to-late 1960s, is that there were two philosophical approaches: Dr. King’s faith-based, inclusive, nonviolent strategy; and Malcom X’s Black Power, “the bullet or the ballot,” movement.
What I Saw in McAllen and Brownsville, Texas
July 21, 2018
“The trouble with [Nazi war criminal and participant in the Final Solution] Adolf Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.