The broken glass 9/29/2024 debbie blane

 

 

The broken glass

                                    Is falling

                                                                        From

                                                                                                            The

                                                                                                                              Sky

When I hold my hands out

It drops in them

And cuts

And there is blood

Bright red

And I see people

With bones

Sticking out

Someone is missing,

                                    Oh Lordie,

                                                      Is missing,

                                                                                                            Their face

 

I am seeing things that lead me to believe

I am in hell

A body

Without a head

I cannot breathe

 

My guts are throwing up

Our beloveds

                                    Are

                                                      Being

                                                                        Shredded

 

                                                                                          And broken

                                                                                                            And taken from us

Before we can say

Good-bye

I love you

Don’t leave

Don’t leave……

POEM: DO I KNOW YOU? BY DEBBIE BLANE 10/20/24

 

Do I know you?

10/20/24  Debbie Blane

 

I was thinking the other day about

My young Debbie

And more mature Debbie

Kissing in life

As passages are passed.

Children born

Grown up

Leaving home

Grandchildren born

Watching and feeling the changes in my

Body as the years pass

Knowing the grief that I feel

As Rachel weeping for her children

A Biblical reference

Relating from the Hebrew Testament

To the Gaza Strip and Lebanon

Of today.

Today as I read a post about Rachel

I decided

To

Claim

Her.

I am Rachel.

She is timeless.

Of course once she was not.

Rachel died young in childbirth

On the road to Jerusalem.

Now there are other mothers

And their babies

Dying young

In

Gaza

In

Lebanon

In

the

West

Bank.

Then I looked in the mirror

And I saw the oddest thing

It was

As though there

Was the young mother me

Looking out

At the

Older

Longer in tooth

Me.

Like we wanted to touch.

“Do I know you?”

I thought I heard her say?

There are beautiful parts of you

Tucked away in me

That you would

Recognize

In the body

That you

Might

Not

Recognize

I said to her.

So many women in Gaza

Are not getting to grow old

And have the

Day

Come

When

Their

Young

And

Old

Selves will meet in a mirror and

Blow a kiss. 

So many babies and wee

Little girls

   In Gaza

       Are not

          Even

             Getting

                To become

                    Old enough

                       To have

Babies.

Family lines

Are being

Wiped

Out.

“Do I know you?”

“You know some of me. 

I know you.

I cherish you. 

You are loved.”

 

The broken glass 9/29/2024 debbie blane

 

 

The broken glass

                                    Is falling

                                                                        From

                                                                                                            The

                                                                                                                              Sky

When I hold my hands out

It drops in them

And cuts

And there is blood

Bright red

And I see people

With bones

Sticking out

Someone is missing,

                                    Oh Lordie,

                                                      Is missing,

                                                                                                            Their face

 

I am seeing things that lead me to believe

I am in hell

A body

Without a head

I cannot breathe

 

My guts are throwing up

Our beloveds

                                    Are

                                                      Being

                                                                        Shredded

 

                                                                                          And broken

                                                                                                            And taken from us

Before we can say

Good-bye

I love you

Don’t leave

Don’t leave……

 

The Grands

9/29/2024  Debbie Blane

 

Watching the children starve

Watching the grandparents whither

But the grandparents are supposed to be

Teaching the grandchildren

The customs

The songs

The ways of living

That have kept the people alive for

So many centuries

As a people.

It is hard to do when the only ones

Left

Are the generations in between.

 

Someday.

Once again.

The middle will have children again

And become the grands

The children will grow up and have

Children

Who will become the grands to the grands

And life will be renewed.

 

 

Hind Rajab 6 Years Old (In Memory Of)

 

Hind Rajab 6 years old

(In memory of)

8/19/2024

Debbie Blane

I was

An

Ordinary girl

With a wonderful

And ordinary life

Until I was left

In a car

With my dead aunt and uncle

And four cousins.

 

The Israeli defense force

Promised me safe passage

And the two

Brave ambulance drivers who were

Sent to retrieve me

To take me to my anxiously waiting mother.

 

They had been promised safe passage

2.

Until.

Until.

The snipers killed me in the backseat

Of the car

And the ambulance drivers

In the ambulance

When we were all supposed to be

 

Set free.

 

I have become a famous six year old martyr

In the world

Because my mother weeps

And I am gone

From my beloved gaza.

 

Now that you know who I am

I will tell you about the ordinary object.

It is an olive wood spoon.

I used to help my mother cook

By stirring things in a pot

With an olive wood spoon.

 

Guess where that spoon came from?

 

My family used to have olive wood groves

Our trees were old

Some of them could be

I don’t know….

Well,

Thousands of years old. 

 

Really.

 

Every year when the olives were picked

The loose olive wood was harvested

And kept to age

Then it was used to make oh so many

Beautiful

Things.

Like olive wood spoons

To stir my mother’s famous

Cooking

With.

 

Until.

Until.

Israel decided that the gaza strip

Could no longer breathe.

Trees have been

 

Destroyed

 

Pulled up by their roots

Chopped off at the bottom

Killed

Murdered

Like

Well,            like

                                            Me.

 

Have you ever held

An

Olive

Wood

Spoon?

?

?

 

They are beautiful.

Smooth.

The grain of the wood shows

And tells a story.

 

An ordinary object

That I held in my hand

That my father had carved

Just

For

Me

Out of the fallen

                                    Branch

                                                  Of

                                                          An

                                                                 Olive

                                                                               Wood

                                                                                              Tree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snakes, buttons or zippers

 

Snakes, buttons or zippers—1,2,

or all three

Or NONE.

Debbie Blane

8/8/2024

 

Who

 

Who

 

Who

       Will I be?

                ?????

When I finally leave my body

And cross the threshold to the

LAST FRONTIER?

 

What

 

What

 

What will I recognize of who I am now?

I know that existence is embodied

As well as Spirit,

So what will that embodiment look like

Feel like

When I leave this body

Behind?

 

When

 

When

 

When will I know that I am different?

That I have left

That I am in the new frontier?

Will there still be air that moves?

Will the stars be next to my hands and

   And my head?

 

Where

 

Where

 

Where will I find myself located?

Or will I have any sense of location

Will I just be a floating particle?

 

Why

 

Why

 

Why is it all such a mystery?

Snakes, buttons, zippers, and me

Are all made of the same building blocks

Is everything interchangeable in the end?

That is really the beginning?

 

I approach closer each day

To this mystery

Sometimes I think it will be a relief

To leave behind the pain of the world

The persecutions

The selfishness, the greed.

 

Of course it is also leaving behind the

   Beauty

The ocean

The sunset and sunrise

Human touch.

 

But is it?

Only God knows.

The God who created it all

From beginning to end

To …………….???????????

 

Coming back with a poem called Secret.

 

Secret

Debbie Blane

7/7/2024

 

Nowadays most people probably think of

Rome

 

As the home of the Church…..

(and yes, this is going to be one of my fam ám ous mini (I’m thinking of Mini Pearl here) sermons)

But it is not.  The home of the church that is.  (This is definitely a mini sermon.)

 

No, no, no, no.

 

The home of the church is in Jerusalem.

It is called the Church of the Sepulcher.

 

Let us start at the very beginning though….

To do that of course we would have to go back to creation

And that would take all day and all night,

So I will tolerate

A short cut.

We will begin in Bethlehem.

In Palestine.

I do marvel sometimes that the Church of the Nativity

Which is erected over the manger where the baby Jesus was

                                           Born,

Has survived 2,000 plus years.  It is not quite that old,

But close enough.

 

In the lower level of the church there is a beautiful gold star

It has been laid over the place where the trough that

Served as crib

In which he was laid

Was sure to have been.

In the manger.

In the barn below the family of the innkeeper.

 

I am a poetic theologian, not a theologian historian

So I am likely taking

Some small pieces of

Poetic              

               license……..

do not , I say, do not

begin giving me the fifth degree

or the fourth,

or whatever the heck it is.

 

Over details.

 

Now we go to Jerusalem, to the Old City.

2,000 years ago it would have been by foot.

It would have taken some time.

For different reasons

And yet,

Not unlike today

With the checkpoints of illegal occupation by Israel,

No longer Rome…..(which occupied Palestine 2,000 years ago)

Where roads are blocked,

Babies are sometimes born waiting to get through

People die from their heart attacks that cannot wait the hours

That are forced upon them

By arrogant young Israeli Defense Force soldiers.

 

So now in our mind’s eye we come to the last days of

Jesus’ earthly dwelling.

The Holy Sepulcher still has worship services

Of very many different kinds

I have been to several of them.

Amazed to worship in places that are so very,

Very,

Ancient. 

When Jesus was crucified it was in a garbage dump outside of the city known as Golgoltha,

The Rock of Calvary.  (Later the dump was brought within the city walls and became a part of this church in the fourth-century)

Jesus was buried in the Holy Sepulchre,

An unused tomb of a Jesus believer,

And when he rose from the dead on Sunday morning it was

Within the confines of the same

Holy space.

Thus.

The. Secret.  (Not really a secret because it is known.  But if one contemplates it in one’s heart it is like a secret that grows and blooms and speaks to the heart of the one in whom it is planted).

 

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is the place

Where Jesus was crucified

Buried

And rose again.

 

Thus it is the home of Christianity.

Rome is Empire, which in many ways

Is entirely a different thing.

 

I have been to the church several times.

I remember one of the last times thinking,

How amazing that it has become familiar,

Like a church on my own block at home.

 

How blessed am I to have been in the place of the

Birth.

Been In the place of the

Crucifixion

Burial

And Resurrection.

Not once, but several times to both.

I have also been to Rome

And Vatican City

To the Sistene Chapel.

I was there in 2006 on one of the rare days when the

Museum

Is free , no admission charged

So I went, free, paying no admission

 

I remember thinking,

How can fundamentalists not understand

That God’s ways

Are not

Our ways?

????????????????

 

Looking back I am grateful

That I already understood

The Bible

Not

       To   

              Be

A science book

Or a history book (okay, sometimes I struggle a bit with this, I admit))

And I wonder,

Do they have many fundamentalists show up at the

Museum?

Do they have to call ambulances very often to take

Shock victims to hospital

Or break up fights when fundamentalists try to,

You know,

Destroy a display?

 

Anyhow.

It is time for me to end.

While the genocide in Gaza continues I am not able

To take my poetry away from the

Suffering people

So we shall continue to see

How God works through me in this.

End of mini sermon.  Ameeeeeeeeeeen.

      

https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/cultural-heritage-gaza-destruction/https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/cultural-heritage-gaza-destruction/