a shortish poem

[wildmandrake]

Genocide (Rwanda)

Written 2000

There are tears,
But they are the fluid of emptiness.
Questions marked by horror, sadness and mystery
Echo through the valleyed brains of an electrified humanity.
In one moment the sleeping herd are awakened to death,
Death as more than a metaphor,
For a moment it is no longer a shadow hiding at the edge of vision,
It is felt as a multi-dimensional reality which instantly evaporates
Leaving a touch so maddening they must run back to their sleepy certainties
To their personal nightmares of trusted irrationalities.
In the horror of the so-called inhuman
Is the confirmation that ignorance is a mirror of protection against the dark
These questions are an acid which doesn’t quite burn into nausea
These tears have been dried by the distance of alien worlds
Alien black children wielding machetes carving utopia out of living flesh
Righteous certainties leaving dried rotting skin stretched over the bones of fading memory
Academics and journalists escape the questions with a web of words
Trivialising a deeply human horror until it becomes safely insane.
From the safety of civilization TV images bind the emotions to the fantastic
Masking the way a gaze can rape,
A touch can pierce
And ambition can murder
The way a locked door can lead to genocide

[Jen]

As I said on Myspace, this is a subject I've had interest in before. I saw the movie Hotel Rwanda and do want to get my hands on the book about the same situation.

Now, you posted this in the sharing forum and didn't ask for critique, so I'm just going to say I read it and liked it. If you want people to actually tell you how they think you could improve the poem, you can either ask in this thread or have me move this thread into the critique forum.

Either way, you're going to get a lot of people reading your poem, you just may not get a lot of responses. Sometimes people just read and don't respond.

[wildmandrake]

Happy to have say what they think and why here or have you move it to the other forum... I'm easy as we say on this side of the pond...

[Jen]

Might as well just leave it here, but let people do critiques if they want.

My criticism would be lack of imagery. You have some beautiful language and lots of words that evoke emotion, but the only actual image you conjure up is of the aggressors with their machetes. ("Alien black children wielding machetes carving utopia out of living flesh") I wonder if you couldn't have some sort of an image of the victims that sticks with the readers afterwards.

I'm not a poet, so you might wait for other opinions before hacking into it if you're wanting to revise, but that was just the feeling I got from it.

Other than that, I really enjoyed reading it and I really like your subject matter.

[Tex]

Originally posted by wildmandrake
Death as more than a metaphor,
For a moment it is no longer a shadow hiding at the edge of vision,
It is felt as a multi-dimensional reality which instantly evaporates
Leaving a touch so maddening they must run back to their sleepy certainties
To their personal nightmares of trusted irrationalities.
In the horror of the so-called inhuman

I really, really like that part.

[wildmandrake]

Bin thinking about jen's comment...

For me poetry is about emotion... other people have a different focus... for me it is about sharing a feel in detail in a way that I hope will connect with others'. The visual is powerful but can be overpowering and distancing if over used. I always have haiku intense visuals but I use them almost like punchlines, attention awakens, crystalliser. I want to bring all the senses in especially feelings in all their complexity, and different senses will suggest themselves during the process as being the most appropriate to really making an statement.

It was good to think through my process and justify, if that is the right word, my style

C.

PS thanks for your comment Tex

[Jen]

If that's how you write, run with it. I guess maybe what I'm questioning isn't the underuse of imagery but which image you chose to use--one of blacks as villains when blacks were also the victims.

[wildmandrake]

Now that's a great point... I saw children who happen to be black and who are victims of the violent chase for utopia... but i see your read of it as valid and maybe i need to be clearer. Interestingly an american black friend of mine didn't pick up on that, he loved that particular line...

[wildmandrake]

I just dropped a poem fresh faced boys into the wrokshop space on the subject of this violent victimisation of boys by society and politics... but also about the cpmlexity of teen desires for adventure expressed through rock n roll...

I put it there to keep to your rules It seems this thread here is moving to a workshoping thang I'm happy wid dat but these r ur rule n I understand dat

[Jen]

As you'll see, I'm not super strict with the rules, especially right now when I don't have a huge community. My real problem would be if someone put a poem in here to share and people started giving unwanted critiques. Because you're ok with people critiquing your work, I'm ok with it, too.

Sometimes I have funny readings of things. Go with your instinct and, with issues of race, what the majority of people think.

[wildmandrake]

I like hearing alternate readings it deepens/broadens my own reading and I'm not interested in a majority reading i'm interested in the variety of available readings... it makes me bigger

[ThePurpledWorld]

I saw the real Paul Rusesabagina (sp?), he came to a college near mine to talk, and he was just... breathtaking, to a point.

Everybody kept asking him how it felt to be a hero, and he just shrugs his shoulders and says "...I'm no hero. I was just doing my job as hotel manager."

A man from the Belgian Congo was there too, and apparently the same sort of thing continues over there today.

I'd love to go over there and help.

Oh, and nice poem!

:D

[wildmandrake]

part of what i was saying in the poem was that evil comes out of the everyday... I think this is true of heroism too.

My line about it all is that "if you want to understand a hurricane you study the everyday weather, if your theory is right you explain both... you want to understand the extremes of human behaviour then it has to be based on the everyday." When we make things like Rwanda "safely insane" we escape our own responsibilities in doing something about it in the way we live. The interconnectedness of us all my success can be your loss if we aren't aware of the way these dynamics work.

Heroism is in the way we act in the everyday, on our morals, our ethics, and in our relationships.

[ZEB]

howzit..snot a bad piece..very speech like for me..:D