At first God saved us from small bands of silent men

Stealing through the desert in search of caravans and camel drivers
stealthier and smarter in the ways of the world

As we, a faith-powered few fueled by a new metaphysic went in search of an answer
in a place where heaven-on-earth comes in two flavors: green and wet

God saved us from Ancient Semite cousins living in sun-baked cities made of mud

With walls tall enough to protect but just enough

Ruled by kings with a king’s street smarts if not much else that was kingly

Who knew the politics of rule went over best

With dusk-to-dawn feasts and enemies’ heads

Placed on sticks

From other kin with no unseen God

Who lived in great places and created engineering marvels undreamed of

by Hebrew poet-shephards, wanderers and seers

to whom math was a thing for Greek and Persian

and simple verses of praise and hope the thing for those who loved HaShem.

God saved us from all that was and is Rome

After 2000 years of hell on earth and social death and death-by-ghetto, mosque, cathedral,
Swastika, Stalin and (death by) the conviction of the least vehement of foes and maybe even the best of friends
that we would never be quite out of the top drawer
-this last infinitely more cutting than the death of a
thousand cuts and in its own way more powerful than the killing fields of the OstFront…

And now we live in an age that says you may not hate

Because hate is wrong and

The smell of death camps

was so strong

That hate itself is devoutly to be feared and exterminated

…unless preached with reasoned arguments

spoken by well dressed types on prime time and cable

so if in the end our algorithm-without-end of hate, persecution, death and survival of the Folk

were to poop-out and die

and we were left with no arch bully to fear and to fight

where, then, would we be

and whom then would we love?

Ourselves?