There is nothing inflammatory in my post from last night. It's safe to read. Sure, I use words that can be interpreted as "dirty" by some people, but I'm simply examining how language can be weaponized. Or not. There simply is no such thing as a good or bad word. Words are just words, until they are turned into guns or bombs or chains by the people using them.
It was a bitterly cold day in my neck of the woods--the kind of cold that forces a person to wear several layers of clothing just to step outside to get the mail. I did take my puppy for a couple walks, but those walks were almost painful to endure, especially with the wind gnawing any inch of exposed skin. The thermometer didn't climb much about 10 degrees Fahrenheit all day long. It felt more like the setting of a bleak Russian novel outside than the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Sharon Olds examines another photograph . . .
Portrait of a Child
by: Sharon Olds
set up by those Armenians who had
not been massacred by the Turks.
In 1921, Turkey and Russia
divided the republic between them).
His face is quite peaceful, really,
like any child asleep, though the skin
is darkened in places, the curved eyelids
turgid, part of the ear missing
as if bitten off. He lies like a child
asleep, on his side, one arm bent
so the hand curls near his face, one arm
dangling across his chest, fingertips
touching the stone street. His shirt has
two rents near the waist, the slits hunters make
in the stomach of the catch.
Besides the shirt he wears nothing. His abdomen is
swollen as the belly of a pregnant woman
and sags to one side. His hip-joint bulges,
a bruise. His thigh is big around as a
newborn's arm, and from hip-bone to knee
the tendon runs sharp as a crease in cloth,
the skin pulling at it. His knees are enormous,
his feet peaceful as in deep sleep,
and across one leg delicately rests
his penis. Pale and lovely there
at the center of the picture, it lies, the source
of the children he would have had, this child
dead of hunger
in Yerevan.
His face is quite peaceful, really,
like any child asleep, though the skin
is darkened in places, the curved eyelids
turgid, part of the ear missing
as if bitten off. He lies like a child
asleep, on his side, one arm bent
so the hand curls near his face, one arm
dangling across his chest, fingertips
touching the stone street. His shirt has
two rents near the waist, the slits hunters make
in the stomach of the catch.
Besides the shirt he wears nothing. His abdomen is
swollen as the belly of a pregnant woman
and sags to one side. His hip-joint bulges,
a bruise. His thigh is big around as a
newborn's arm, and from hip-bone to knee
the tendon runs sharp as a crease in cloth,
the skin pulling at it. His knees are enormous,
his feet peaceful as in deep sleep,
and across one leg delicately rests
his penis. Pale and lovely there
at the center of the picture, it lies, the source
of the children he would have had, this child
dead of hunger
in Yerevan.
This is a poem that seems appropriate to read on such an inhospitable winter night. Unflinching. Truthful. Heartbreaking. For some reason, I imagine the photograph Olds is describing as a winter scene, the body of the child left in a snowbank on a street.
I really appreciate that Olds is able to build to such a tender moment into her final lines when she addresses the sex of the child. It's about a future cut short by the Armenian genocide wrought by Turkey and Russia. It puts a wholly human face on atrocity.
Most of the poems I write aren't very happy, in case you haven't noticed. Yes, I sometimes use humor or juxtaposition to highlight important images or assertions, but, overall, I wouldn't describe my writing as funny in any conventional way. I prefer poems that are confrontational. That force readers to examine themselves and their lives.
Today, for some reason, I've been thinking about the meaning of loss. Perhaps I'm foolish, but I do believe that everything happens for a reason. (Yes, even the election of a convicted felon to the Oval Office has some kind of meaning, even though I'm still struggling to discern what that meaning is.) Whether a loss is catastrophic (genocide) or personal (the death of a loved one), there must be some lesson to learn, or else the universe is just a random machine and humankind a failed experiment. I refuse to accept that.
Yes, human beings do shitty things, to each other and the planet. Yes, it's easy to get discouraged and sad. Believe me, I know that. Yet, in the end, light overcomes darkness. Spring overcomes winter. Love overcomes hatred. Kindness overcomes cruelty. I have great faith in those statements.
Saint Marty has another new poem to share tonight.
Here was today's prompt from The Daily Poet: Write a list of the coldest words you can think of--everything from ice to Ice Capades, snowball to Antarctica. Once you have your list of at least twenty words, incorporate the most interesting ones into a poem about summer, kite flying, or something else that has nothing to do with freezing temperatures.
That August Day
by: Martin Achatz
I remember visiting you
in the hospital that August day
when a hot glacier of sun crawled
across the blue, blue sky, you
in your bed, face blizzard white,
lips dry and rough as tundra.
You were drifting, drifting toward
that permafrost place where Christmas
never comes, the squalls and whiteouts
of your brain scan telling the story
of how it would all end two or so
weeks later, when the polar bear
of your soul lumbered onto an ice
floe, set sail toward the Northern
Lights as they chewed the distant
horizon into emerald and rose.
