Nation Shall Not…But They Still Do – A poem for Parsha Lech Lecha

And the king of Sodom and the king of Gomorrah and the king of Admah
and the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela, which is Zoar, came forth,
and they engaged them in battle in the valley of Siddim.
— Genesis 14:8

So many kings fighting
so many other kings
for land or honor.

I’d like to think
these are stories
only in the past.

Legends with swords
and suits of armor
I can see in museums.

Not tales for today.
But it turns out humans
aren’t so sensible.

Swords replaced with
things that hurt more.
Much of war fought

digitally, as is the
custom of our age.
I’d like to think

one good read of
The Butter Battle Book
could fix all this.

But the news streams
tell me otherwise.
Just today Russia

built the best missile ever.
Weren’t we okay with Russia
just a few minutes ago?

I was just about to
have Russia over for dinner.
I had no idea we

were still fighting.
I dream of the people
with the flowers –

Their flowy aquarius
Their reckless desert dance
Their season of love

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 25 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.