image – Ayad Ali Dayeer, a soldier in the Iraqi Army’s Reconnaissance Unit, smokes a cigarette in a house that his unit is searching with supervision from U.S. Marines in Haditha, 220 kilometers northwest of Baghdad, Saturday, May 28, 2005. (AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg)
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support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
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support the victims of torture
support the fallen
support the troops
support the troops and the Iraqi people
read `This is what John Kerry did today,’ the diary by lawnorder that prompted this series
read Riverbend’s blog – `Bagdhad Burning’
witness every day
image and poem below the fold
On Turning Ten
by Billy Collins
The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I’m coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light–
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.
You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.
This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.
A comment – I’ve tried to stay away from seeming clever or ironic or otherwise cool in these diaries. I’ve also tried to convey to you, and to convince myself, that these diaries are not “about me” at all.
Ha! Who am I trying to kid? Of course they’re about me. And I think that today’s image and poem makes it clear, so why try to hide it?
These diaries are all about me – me trying to make sense of events that make no sense; me trying to find pictures and poems that somehow say “something;” me trying to elicit from you a comment, a recommendation, anything that somehow tells me that I’m doing something, anything, that has some value or makes some impression or otherwise goes out from my head and heart and into yours.
This Iraqi soldier looks just like Keith Richards to me, but I don’t know who that is on the TV. I don’t know if Keith Richards would wear combat gear or carry a gun – I kinda doubt it. But I know he’d wear the headband.
So this is where I am today. This is what I’ve come to – searching through poetry archives and wire service photos and posting self-referential/pop culture gibberish, while people I’ve never met are being terrorized and blown up every day, with no end in sight. It makes no sense, but I’m so glad you’re here.
