for Lab/Shul, NYC
The infinite cannot be described: it arrives on lightning feet. Tears words like rags while barking dogs command hilltops and alleys. Daubs oaths of crows in tar on clouds rolls through the streets turning day into night and blood into frogs. Kills the firstborn. Miracles move backwards and fill our mouths with mundane curses. Standing in a general silence we confess sins in first person plural till the true judge opens a golden book. To mispronounce the holy name correctly requires a poet’s brain. From a broken-footed beauty new poetry emerges whole enough to notice the leg of an ant. We imagined our God as a poet with one book whose words create things. The poet spoke lilacs honey sodium a man named Job a woman named Life. Spoke elephant and the elephant struggled from the muck. The ass proffered a blessing and the prophet was cursed. Blessed be the nameless, blessed the naming. Blessed the Unnamable un-naming itself.