The Pillars of Cloud ‘Nightmare’

My unconscious mind decided that I needed a "pandemi-ccupation" dream. Two sieges converged on a neutral setting: Cass County Michigan. Dreams happen in present-tense:

Angrier Draft

Allow me to get angry and flush my system:   Dear New York Times Staff, Once again Israeli officials, most notably the Likud-party scum who are in power right now, have successfully inundated your rag with a giant pile of rotting red-herrings. Just as the European Union has them on notice for their human rights…

Coarse Draft

I am stumbling back into the practice of writing. A request to write letters to the New York times just went out on one of the listservs I still follow from my work e-mail account. The prospect is daunting to me both because of the seriousness of that request and the shiploads of emotional baggage…

Mega Man X Complex: The Shield

As Mega Man X enters Sigma’s fortress, Vile is still yet to be defeated. In game-play, I always assumed that Vile had no particular weakness and so spent time maneuvering, picking him apart with X-buster blasts, but the solution was already with me: The Shield. Vile’s weakness, all along, was a weapon called ‘Rolling Shield’…

An Open Letter to an American

[Dear Respectable Church-Person], Thank you so much for your comments. It seems, to me, that we are on a journey with the same issue but from different angles, in different amounts, and at different points in our lives. The fact that you engage me in a conversation about the situation in the Holy Land is…

Always Burning: 2

Watch for the Smoke... The evacuation began when the crack of the first stone hitting concrete sent shock-waves through our coffee cups. We were all sitting down-stairs, together. Wa’el ran up the stairs to street-level in a flash, to check, and burst into the foyer again within seconds saying  “yulla, yulla... let’s go before the…

Borderlands: The Tabernacle Police

These scenes have to ferment for at least a week before the bouquet of poetic humor can mature. Last week I left the sanctuary of the Wi’am office at 4 PM and walked around an amoeboid scab of dividing barrier. I went to and through the Bethlehem check-point so I could attend a meeting at…