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Second Law
speech:
and here, on mount horeb, is where it starts, with moses and the bullets of his mouth
bellowing the rhythm of a carcass who severs the outer layer of a blood bubble
colonizing our waters from the arpeggio of his tongue | his words replay the cracking of bones
delocalizing the llano of this Palestine | here and now | we have been ordered to destroy.
every word was built on a mountain of bodies | yet there is only one who is resurrected
funneling the saliva that creeps to the tip of the jaw | waiting to exit the mouth
gallery of grammar unspoken | there is nothing but a detonator of silence |
hands rip and push and tighten fingers around a trigger that explodes for generations
israel is a doctrine for execution | an impromptu beat, a watering hole, of genocide
creation:
jew is a cocktail of blood | a mixture of zealot torture
known as the torah | in a font | for the white man. a
language parting waves, opening the flood of a poem.
merely a constituent for that of a dead sea | salting the earth with its poetry.
numina brawls with jacob in the soil: that is now crisped to the spine of israel
overprivileged and rattled with a plot of dirt. punishing and punishing and
punishing | one who might question | the blue and white flag of “freedom”
end:
quilting on a blanket above the sour floorboards of the attic | she attempts a
revelation | and it is scratching at her like the tik of a clock
seeing only, the future windmill of a holocaust | circling and circling from the air of the past
tense to the holler | we revolve back | listening to devarim from the beginning of his gut
under the gentle of a mountain | we have been ordered to destroy
vibrating the bass to this revolution | sirens, chanting, flaming, burning | this
water clashes with the edge of a cliff like a war drum | it boils until no more.
xeric enough to cotton your throat | these are what real screams sound like
you have been ordered to fight
zesting the songs of our future | for this revolution | is inside | of | you.
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This poem is a reflection on the Ten Commandments and how they proceeded to destroy and exploit the expansion of Western civilization. Part one is in the lens of an Israelite listening to Moses on top of Mount Horeb giving the main subject (Ten Commandments) on the Book of Deuteronomy, a.k.a, Devarim (Hebrew translation). To me this poem was written to open the eyes of other Abrahimic-ally religious people to acknowledge that far too many aspects of these “faithful” books are destructive as opposed to helpful and guiding. So to wrap up the poem— two new narrators are introduced: the last one telling the people to stand up and fight for a revolution and change that you want and need as faithful or formerly faithful human beings.
Oz Leshem is a fifteen year old poet from Taos, New Mexico. They are a Sophomore in the Creative Writing program at New Mexico School for the Arts. Oz was a finalist for the 2020 Santa Fe Youth Poet Laureate and is a national medalist in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Their work has been published in Cathartic Literary Magazine, Ice Lolly Review, Clear Skies Zine, and Dreams of Montezuma: An Anthology of Poetry and Prose, among others. Oz was selected as a 2020 Miller Scholar for excellence in Creative Writing and is the recipient of the New Mexico State New York Life Award.