Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Sunday, December 16, 2012

Sunday Night Poem

TRAGEDY

It begins to sink in. Dead
Is dead, not just not
Here. The knife never dulls,
Does it, Dearie,
On the blade side.

Now the daily face-rain is over
The edge of a moment.
The ash box and I bide our time.
This is typical. This is classical.
This is what tragedy was

Always trying to teach us.
Those toga wrapped torsos,
That chattering
Chorus, those women
With Psyche-knots in the center

Of a circular stage,
Under an Athenian sun,
Foreign enough now to confound
The eye that knows nothing
Of them but what comes crawling

Larva-like out of a book.
In yesterday's dream
We and others all
Wrapped ourselves in sheets
And went flying. Something

Like Peter Pan. Something
Like a child who will always be
A child. Who would never grow up
And who now never will become
Because his eyes have been

Ceased shut and will not open ever.

                                --Mary Jo Bang, from Elegy

2 comments:

FreeThinke said...


_______________ QUESTIONS _______________


How does it feel to be cut in half
_____ by a sudden burst of machine gun bullets?


What does it feel like at the precise moment
_____ when a bullet enters your eye, and pierces your brain?




Can you imagine having your lower jaw smashed by bullets
_____ and then see its bloody, splintered fragments
__________ drop to the ground ?




What is it like to take a direct hit to the skull?
_____ Would you know that you were dead?




What sensations must a person feel
_____ as his body is being consumed by fire?




What might be the thoughts of someone
_____ just thrown to the ground and kicked,
__________ whose hands have been tied behind his back,
who then gets chained by his heels
_____ to the rear end of a vehicle
__________ about to drag his still-healthy, still-unbroken
_______________ young body over stones, gravel,
____________________ dirt and thorny stubble?




How does it feel to have the flesh ripped off your cheeks?
_____ To have all the flesh on your hands torn off
__________ exposing bones and tendons?


How does it feel to have grit and gravel
_____ embed themselves in your eyes?


How does it feel to be torn
_____ limb from limb by a jeering mob?




Exactly how does it feel to have your head
_____ stomped to jelly by hobnailed boots?
Or your genitalia ripped out by the roots
_____ and stuffed into your screaming mouth?




How does it feel to be smart enough to realize
_____ you are suffering and dying for the sole purpose
__________ of lining the pockets of international bankers, _______________ global industrialists and the suppliers
____________________ of war materiel with gold?





Exactly how would you react to being held down
_____ and having your teeth kicked down your throat,
__________ your eyes gouged out,
_______________ your ears and your nose sliced off,
____________________ or a glass rod inserted in your urethra
_________________________ and then smashed to pulver?




How would you feel when you are forced to eat
_____ ground glass or drink hydrochloric acid?




How would you feel if you were sodomized by barbarians
_____ then buried up to your neck in sand
__________ and systematically stoned and kicked to death?




How does it feel to be held down and deliberately blinded by acid?




How does it feel to be maimed by “Friendly Fire?




How does it feel to be flayed alive
_____ and then slowly cut to ribands?




How? How? How?

But much more important is




WHY?




__________ WHY?



____________________WHY?



~ FreeThinke - 6/12/12

Shaw Kenawe said...

Magazines that fed bullets into the primary firearm used to kill 26 children and adults at a Connecticut school would have been banned under state legislation that the National Rifle Association and gunmakers successfully fought.

The shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Adam Lanza, 20, used a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle with magazines containing 30 rounds as his main weapon, said Connecticut State Police Lieutenant Paul Vance at a news conference yesterday.

A proposal in March 2011 would have made it a felony to possess magazines with more than 10 bullets and required owners to surrender them to law enforcement or remove them from the state. Opponents sent more than 30,000 e-mails and letters to state lawmakers as part of a campaign organized by the NRA and other gun advocates, said Robert Crook, head of the Hartford- based Coalition of Connecticut Sportsmen, which opposed the legislation.

“The legislators got swamped by NRA emails,” said Betty Gallo, who lobbied on behalf of the legislation for Southport- based Connecticut Against Gun Violence. “They were scared of the NRA and the political backlash.