WELCOME TO JENRAY'S CELEBRATIONS AND THOUGHTS

We come as tabla rasa - blank sheet
ready to be written on.
No, not true.
We come encoded - a new recording
of an ancient script.
Data’s issue.
A history engrained - each cell
recalling information.
Neurons sparking.
A mother board wired up - ready
for instruction.
Software’s living tissue.
We are waiting to download - a code
for living from the source.
Potential incarnated.
And we wait in expectation - incoming
data to reach the stars.
Flawed programs.
Flow in never ending streams - corrupting,
limiting the future’s dream.
New programmer’s required.
Before we crash or die - we’re waiting,
we’re waiting, new data please.

****

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveller, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Israel, the dream of the dispossessed
born of ancient mythical beliefs
of seers, prophets and warrior kings.

A land, desired by wanderers of old,
warned, when history was legend,
make no territory yours but was ignored.

A people, honed by journeys long and tiring,
filled with dreams of being chosen
by a god not seen before, a guide within the fire.

The promises, signed, sealed and delivered,
fulfilled with omens, dreams and sights
carried tribes to where milk and honey flowed.

A dynasty, proclaimed god given right to rule,
in spite of prophetic cries of doom,
and judges gave way to one king over all.

A conqueror, defeated and dispersed the tribes
to scatter far and wide and leave but two,
clinging in despair to their dream of Israel’s land.

A god, conceived of centuries before,
born again in words and tales of founding fathers,
sons, wars and strife laid out a history for life.

A restoration, to rule again their tribal kingdom,
gave hope, but time, and unheeded warnings,
saw the end of golden days as it fell before the Romans.

The diaspora, a journey on an epic scale,
ending with the tribe’s near demise,
saw again Israel rise at a hellish cost for one and all.

The warning, still travels through the aeons of time,
make no territory your own it calls,
but ears are deaf, and eyes blinded to a god long gone.

The struggle, born of usurpation of lands long lost,
sits in paranoid isolation; a tribe of old,
burning with fiery zeal for acceptance and resurrection.

The world, viewing events unfold with mixed emotions,
dumb in the face of horrors constantly recalled,
stands by and waits or helps Armageddon to begin.