Walk with me on rocky paths along an algaed-creek

Your off-lead dog leading us

Walk with me shivering on ice carpets

To tres bon restaurants and palaces of art

Walk with me past Middle Age baby Jesus painted gold


Sit with me, in a chair for one, our glassed-over eyes scanning for significance

Your side pressed close to mine, comforting

Sit with me on your porch puffing smoke into the evening air

Your dog dropping slobbered toys on our laps

Sit with me, let’s watch grass grow and wither

Leaves fall and reappear


Ride me, cry out to me with naught to tell me but my name

Ride me, your hips and lips erasing all words mis-written on my page

Ride me to that oblivion where the whole world shoots through us quaking


Delude me, tell me I’m not unimportant, I’m your one

Delude me, let me hope our love endures all nights to come

Delude me, and kiss me when you walk me to the door.

American Identity Card

I composed the following poem in 2011, frustrated that America backed Israel's efforts to block the declaration of Palestinian statehood. The point of departure is a famous lament by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.


Inscribe that I’m American
With a treasury overfull of empty promises
I give borrowed money to your enemies
To buy the truncheons thwacking your knees
My silence highers a concrete wall between your eyes
and your uprooted trees
While bullets rip the flesh of destinies
And fiery ordnance whose solemn syllable decrees
Deceitful vows of vengeances

Eclipse

by Gus Ginsburg


Our moon bathes in sunlight
And we admire his scarred handsomeness
When our world with its bills and bickering interposes
Blocking the moon’s view of his beloved
He knows her smile is not for him
His face darkens like a man too-oft defeated
Outshone by every tiny insignificant star