September 7: Howard W. Campbell, Jr., Seth Shellhouse, Poetry Workshop

The Americans in the slaughterhouse had a very interesting visitor two days before Dresden was destroyed.  He was Howard W. Campbell, Jr., an American who had become a Nazi.  Campbell was the one who had written the monograph about the shabby behavior of American prisoners of war.  He wasn't doing more research about prisoners now.  He had come to the slaughterhouse to recruit men for a German military unit called "The Free American Corps."  Campbell was the inventor and commander of the unit, which was supposed to fight only on the Russian front.

 I recently read an article comparing Howard W. Campbell, Jr., to Donald Trump.  The parallels were a little frightening.  The author, Seth Shellhouse, concludes his little piece like this:

The impotent old men and the impudent young boys whose fear of losing their “superior” ethno-national identity and all of the advantages that come with it got them all Hitler’d-up-and-enlisted at a time when their war was all but over. They live in the same hog house with their prisoners who, at this point, are no longer prisoners but just Americans following the rules and taking mutual shelter with the Germans. In the end, the bombs fall and the Russians come and collect the guards and their POWs all the same. The guards probably thought the hog house was theirs, and at one time that may have been the case, but it’s not anymore. I’m not saying the Trump folks are bad people. This is a metaphor. I’m not saying they’re (all) Nazis. But I am saying that they are the really, really sad and broken leftovers of something that never should have been.

That's a little unnerving.  Kurt Vonnegut, almost 50 years ago, foresaw the rise of Donald Trump and his supporters.  For me, Shellhouse's comparison makes sense.  It explains how the United States has suddenly become a mirror of Nazi Germany.  Trump backers are disaffected and angry, and they're looking for somebody to blame.  Those somebodies are Muslims and African Americans and Jewish people. 

I don't have any answers here.  I have a lot of questions.  The United States, my country, has been transformed in nine months' time into a place I don't recognize.  A place where hatred and bigotry are accepted.  I want to believe that, eventually, love and acceptance will prevail.  Right now, I'm not so sure.

Tonight, however, Saint Marty is teaching a poetry workshop, filled with people who do choose love and acceptance.  That's something to be thankful for.

June 13: Muslims, Poet of the Week, Adonis, "The New Noah"

As Donald Trump rails against the Muslim community tonight, I have decided to choose Arab poet Adonis as the Poet of the Week.  Adonis was born in 1930 in Syria, and his name is always on the list of possible winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature. 

Yes, I am featuring Adonis to make a point to all the Donald Trump supporters out there:  all Muslims are not terrorists.  Muslims are neighbors and coworkers and artists and business owners.  And poets.  Sure, there are Muslim extremists who do terrible things, but Muslims do not have a monopoly on extremism.  Extremists come in all shapes, sizes, and genders.  And all religions have their share of dark moments.  (Ever hear of the Spanish Inquisition?  The Crusades?) 

If Adonis is a terrorist, so is Saint Marty

The New Noah

by:  Adonis

       1

We travel upon the Ark, in mud and rain,

Our oars promises from God.   

We live—and the rest of Humanity dies.   

We travel upon the waves, fastening

Our lives to the ropes of corpses filling the skies.

But between Heaven and us is an opening,

A porthole for a supplication.

"Why, Lord, have you saved us alone

From among all the people and creatures?

And where are you casting us now?

To your other Land, to our First Home?

Into the leaves of Death, into the wind of Life?

In us, in our arteries, flows a fear of the Sun.

We despair of the Light,

We despair, Lord, of a tomorrow

In which to start Life anew.

If only we were not that seedling of Creation,

Of Earth and its generations,

If only we had remained simple Clay or Ember,

Or something in between,

Then we would not have to see   

This World, its Lord, and its Hell, twice over."

                         2

If time started anew,

and waters submerged the face of life,

and the earth convulsed, and that god

rushed to me, beseeching, "Noah, save the living!"

I would not concern myself with his request.

I would travel upon my ark, removing   

clay and pebbles from the eyes of the dead.

I would open the depths of their being to the flood,

and whisper in their veins   

that we have returned from the wilderness,   

that we have emerged from the cave,

that we have changed the sky of years,

that we sail without giving in to our fears—

that we do not heed the word of that god.

Our appointment is with death.   

Our shores are a familiar and pleasing despair,

a gelid sea of iron water that we ford   

to its very ends, undeterred,

heedless of that god and his word,

longing for a different, a new, lord.