I will set a king over myself, like all the nations around me
Pick a king from amongst your brothers.
How you define brother is up to you.
These days it may include sister
or another word you’re comfortable with
Do not give your king (which is another word
which may cause discomfort) too many horses.
With too many horses, they may be inclined
to read them back to Egypt. That would
defeat the whole purpose of this.
Likely, too many wives, or if you prefer partners
may violate existing local laws, even though
this whole thing is a startup and the
idea of laws is new.
Don’t pay your king, your ruler, your
let’s hope they’re benevolent, person in charge
too much. Eventually they’ll want to put
their visage on the money which may create
an unfortunate sense of ownership.
Have your King, your guardian, your person
in charge of the armies, write two Torah scrolls. It’s not
that they don’t have someone to do these kinds of things.
You just want them to stay immersed in the words.
It’s these words which overrule everything that
comes out of their divinely appointed mouths.
Surrounded by their minimal complement of horses
and wives. It’s these words that
brought us out of Egypt in the first place.
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 “The Tokyo-Van Nuys Express” (Poems written in Japan – Ain’t Got No Press, August 2020) 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.
