A Mouthful – A poem for Parsha Shemot

So now, go! I will be with your mouth, and I will instruct you what you shall speak.
-Exodus 4:12

I never knew I was ready to do something
until someone asked me to do it.

Like the first time I picked up a guitar to
lead a song which I never would have done

had another songleader not told me it’s time.
Suffice it to say no-one died from my efforts

and now at least a part of my mortgage is paid
by intertwining souls with music and voices.

It doesn’t always work out that way. When they
promoted me to shift manager at McDonald’s

(pausing for shocked reactions about the Jewish
vegetarian poet who used to work at McDonald’s)

because I was so good at the window, flawless really.
It didn’t work out and after the incident with the

lunch rush and too-slow counted cash register drawer
I was gone. I landed on my feet, as most nineteen

year-olds do with a plush Radio Shack job where
I quickly became the top salesperson, though

I infuriated the owner one day when he saw
I’d put one of his neck ties I found in the back room

on display with a price tag. I left that job of
my own accord when they offered me an opportunity

to press buttons at a radio station. I also got to
point at people when it was their time to talk.

It was a dream, until the place was sold, and
without wanting to detail every instance of my life

in this one poem (I mean, really, who has the time)
it all worked out fine. Now I press other buttons

and the mortgage people are happy.
I couldn’t have done any of this without others

putting their mouths behind me and urging me
forward with their words. Moses, on the breath of

the biggest words possible defeats an empire
starts us on our way home.

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 26 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 “I Am Not Writing a Book of Poems in Hawaii” (Poems written in Hawaii – Ain’t Got No Press, August 2022) 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.