Parshas Devarim - Ash Throat

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedMoshe saved this shard for the final hour
when air thins and memory tastes of smoke.

desert-scarred, voice raw,
he rips the bandage at last.
we unroll his words every year
a heartbeat before the black ninth.

this is the pain and loss of this time

it’s the lecture Moshe wanted to give at every crisis.

it all comes pouring out now.
for all generations.
all our pain.
all our loss.

the Yid Hakadosh called Devarim his mussar sefer.

in the heat of summer,
The scroll crackles, the pulse stutters.
Moshe speaks of calf-gold,
spy-lies,
swallowed tents;
blood on parchment.
ripped from the throat
of one who knew the end

the last line of Devarim pierces the dust:
“You shall not fear them, for the Lord your God, he shall fight for you.” (Devarim 3:22)

we feared anyway.
still do.
each shiver of doubt feeds a dark beast
that is never satisfied.

forgetting,
like slow acid on stone,
the exile remains.

our house up on the hill
burnt, scarred, forever
the mark left on our unconscious
mind
must be kept

like the room of a child lost
a shrine with his things
slowly gathering
dust

before this dark day,
each year we read this parsha.

let the words blister,
sand your tongue,
chain you to the floor
until tears remember how to flow.

let your deeds
and those of your fathers and mother
pour through you, endless
screaming into the night of oblivion

watch them slip between your fingers

this is not a time to hide.
peel back the layers
sit with the fetid, rotting underside.
let it play through your mind.

this is the parsha
we dare not learn in school,
for what then do you say
to the mirror of your truth

yet you must
you must
you must

when memory lives,
fear shrivels,
and the fighter steps back
into the fire with us.

everything hangs on the last pasuk.
for it is all there ever was and all we ever need.
and the first thing we
forget