Too Dark – a poem for Torah Portion Bo

And the darkness will become darker

It got so dark in Egypt.
How dark they’re shouting
from the audience.

I’d like to press the invert button
on this piece of paper to show you.
But even then there’d be

specs of light where the letters
give you false hope. The one
where you couldn’t move

from your place for three days.
Imagine how dark it became
in your stomach.

Too many poems use the word
dark. Or maybe we needed one more.
It’s embarrassing to be sheltered

in a speck of light, when
outside the door, They’re about
to take the children away.

Los Angeles poet Rick Lupert created the Poetry Super Highway (an online publication and resource for poets), and hosted the Cobalt Cafe weekly poetry reading for almost 21 years. He’s authored 23 collections of poetry, including “God Wrestler: A Poem for Every Torah Portion“, “I’m a Jew, Are You” (Jewish themed poems) and “Feeding Holy Cats” (Poetry written while a staff member on the first Birthright Israel trip), and most recently “Hunka Hunka Howdee!” (Poems written in Memphis, Nashville, and Louisville – Ain’t Got No Press, May 2019) and edited the anthologies “Ekphrastia Gone Wild”, “A Poet’s Haggadah”, and “The Night Goes on All Night.” He writes the daily web comic “Cat and Banana” with fellow Los Angeles poet Brendan Constantine. He’s widely published and reads his poetry wherever they let him.