🎠Poem: "Elul Blues (The Ballad of the Brokenhearted Beloved)"
Style: Bitter-sweet blues with a wink of holy foolishness
I woke up in Elul with a heart full of holes,
My coffee was bitter, my soul felt old.
“I am my Beloved’s,” I tried to recite—
But my Wi-Fi was down and the Light was in flight.
I put on my tefillin and sang a sad song,
"Where are You, Beloved? What took You so long?"
But the heavens were silent, just like my phone,
And the will to receive said, “You’re on your own.”
I danced with my sorrow, my pain wore a grin,
My ego laughed, “He won’t let you in!”
Still, I knocked and I cried, with a love that won’t quit—
And the answer came back: “You ain’t earned it yet.”
So I fasted from reason, feasted on faith,
Marinated my heart in a doubt-laced wraith.
Each mitzvah I did with a tear and a joke,
Like grilling a steak with no meat or smoke.
“I’ll love You,” I whispered, “though I’m broke and bruised,
Though my vessels are shattered, and my soul's confused.
I give You this mess, all cracked and flawed,
Because You, my Beloved, are still my God.”
Then a whisper returned through the silence and ache,
Like a breeze through the ruins that never quite break.
“My beloved,” it hummed, “you remembered the call—
And I was beside you through pain and through fall.”
So I’m back in the work with a limp and a grin,
Elul’s my rehab for shedding old skin.
The sorrow still bites, the humor still stings—
But love is a ladder that pain sometimes brings.
