SCORPIONS

Together they conspired
To calously
Put to death
Years of love, trust, good will, and generosity
By cruel insinuations
Of things past,
Half truths and outright lies.

Together they conspired
To darken the aproaching
Festivals of the very God
To whom they hypocritically Vowed allegience
And thereby
Prevent the restoration
Of His House
By their viscious and slanderous tongues.

Together they conspired
To commit verbal murder
With full knowledge
Of their religion's admonition
Against shaming a fellow in public
Causing the blood to redden his face.

Together they conspired
In the face of
The coming Day of Atonement
To spread unmerited
LASHAN HARA and RECHILUT
Against one who showed them
Love, respect, admiration, and good will,
And one aged enough to have been
Father to both.

Together they conspired
To immodestly
Speak on a public thoroughfare
Of libidinous intimacies
Forbidden by their professed faith
And thereby
Shame and sadden their own religious Leader,
Things of the past
While intentionally
Suppressing the good deeds and thoughts
Of the present.

Together they sonspired to
Actualize the Biblical verse,
"Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted,
which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up [his] heel against me." Psalm 41:9   
In the face of him
Who created them a pair
And shamelessly
Implant a knife within his heart,
A heart which opened to them both.

Together they conspired to
Actualize the Biblical verse,
"And I find more bitter than death
the woman, whose heart is snares and nets,
and her hands as bands;
whoso pleaseth God shall escape from her;
but the sinner shall be taken by her."
Ecclesiastes 7:26
In the face of him
Who gave her love and kindness
And in return
She gave him bitterness and
Vexation of the soul.

Together they conspired
To prove
To the wide world
The utter futility
Of asking
Why the Scorpion
Fatally stings
The very one
Ferrying him
Across the river.
It is the nature
Of the creature
Now revealed in each of them
And both of them,

Together they conspired
To defeat their very purpose
Of accomplisging their desire
Which one would willingly
Have given them
Had they approached in love
And kindness -
But now.
In disillusioned horror
Feels Immobilized
To act on their behalf.

Together they conspired
To engender
Undying hatred
In one
Who would have
Loved them well
Into a holy future
As in the past -
One who by his very presence
Shall be a constant reminder
Of their lawless and loveless
Cruelty and Betrayal
When the holy community
Learns of their
Souless and sinfull acts.

Together they conspired
To begin their
Unholy and ill-fated
Partnership
With the adherence
Of those KLIPOT
Dragged on
From their past
Ill fated partnerships
Which shall
In the end
Determine
The once again futility
Of their strivings.
 
Together they conspired
To have excommunicated
The one who preceded them
Into the holy place
And the one who brought
The Faithless Woman
Back to where
She longed to be
Sometimes, Only
When her self awareness      
Overcame her torpitude,
And those times - too few.

Together they conspired
To destroy the web of friendships
Painstakingly built up over the years
And to cause the congregants
To wonder at their behavior
And at the absence
Of the Betrayed
That yet lingers on till today.