Shema yisrael, adonai elohenu, adonai echad —
watchword of the Jewish faith, declaring the oneness of God
Listen Israel —
The lord is one.
The world is one.
Everything one.
Created by the same creator
with the same atomic particles
in the same black bang.
Are you listening?
No one is.
We’re terrorized by terrorists,
suffocated by the smell of strangers
who don’t know the lyrics to our song,
crawling back from AI truth
to 3-D myths of yesteryear
waiting for the savior
who’ll convert our H2O to wine.
Ritalin’d and Klonopin’d,
all we really want is peace
and a smaller piece of humble pie
in universe of blackened holes
unmoved by what we’re praying for —
like prisoners trapped in Plato’s cave
unsure of the source of light.
Paula Rudnick is a former television writer and producer who has spent the past 30 years as a volunteer for nonprofit organizations. In the past several years, she has begun to write poetry — another nonprofit endeavor.
