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Kol Nidre
("All our vows")
by Mel Weisburd

After a dreamless night I discover
my fingerprints eroded from toxic print,
my eyes and ears bruised by the media.
When was the world stolen while I was busy?

I will no longer tolerate such
hectoring and campaigning
the guilt from appeals everywhere
and all that is non-interactive and read only.
I shall leap across "on" and "off."
How pale then will digital messages become
to the merest tremor in a woman's voice
heard first hand.

I won’t eat, drink, speak or think your
or anyone else’s arguments.
Don’t knock on my door or ring my phone!
Don’t dare convert me!
I’m paid up and will pay only cash.
From now on I will purchase less and less
of what I was fooled to need.
I dissolve my debts and owe nothing to
inquirers, inquisitors and informers.
I cancel my subscriptions to all cultural usurpation.
I shall remain in the diaspora, free of all compromise
and corruption of language and have faith only
in independent witness and relativity.
I am a lost soul. A lost soul is what I wish to be.

I shall pay attention only to news that rises from the depths
of oceans, space, soul, far from cable and wireless.
And all that pounding music that misses a beat
and hisses like a cat. I shall ignore anyone
who speaks for God and flag.

Is human nature nothing more than
language mis-spoken and misread?

What shall I believe in the absence
of all that failed? I shall turn them all off,
pluck the weeds out network by network
synapse by synapse,
then I shall begin again.