Iraq War Grief Daily Witness (photo) Day 286

“[I]n times of crisis it’s interesting that people don’t turn to the novel or say, ‘We should all go out to a movie,’ or ‘Ballet would help us.’ It’s always poetry. What we want to hear is a human voice speaking directly in our ear.”

Billy Collins, U.S. Poet Laureate (2001-2003) speaking to the New York Times, as quoted in The Dead Beat by Marilyn Johnson

this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters

we honor courage in all its forms

cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, and My Left Wing.

april is national poetry month

image and poem below the fold

an image from the multimedia presentation The Lifeline
A three-part Los Angeles Times series following the lives of soldiers wounded in Iraq
by David Zucchino
photographs by Rick Loomis

From Digby’s Hullabaloo

Voices From The front

by digby

I highly recommend this series in the LA Times about wounded military in Iraq and Afghanistan. (There are some very graphic pictures, so don’t look if you have a weak stomach. It’s the real face of the war in all its bloody horror.)

It’s quite a tribute to these soldiers’ courage and the miracle of modern medicine. There have been more than 17,000 wounded in Iraq thus far, an average of 110 per week. In past wars a vast number of them would have died. Today, with great battlefield medicine and immediate transport to Europe and the States, most of them pull through. But their wounds are grievous and their lives will never be the same. The primary means of wounding them isn’t bullets — it’s explosive devices.

These people have made a great sacrifice for a cynical, political purpose and it makes me furious. It’s not the first time this has happened in history, but it damned well ought to be the last time the US ever does it.

The Lifeline
A three-part Los Angeles Times series following the lives of soldiers wounded in Iraq
by David Zucchino
photographs by Rick Loomis

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

A Bird in Hand
by Amber Flora Thomas

I’ve memorized its heart pounding into my thumb.
Breath buoys out. My fingers know how to kill,
closing on the bird’s slippery head.

I don’t remember. Was it that beak bit my chin?
Was it a claw cut my wrist? I blow feathers
away from its chest, smelling pennies and rain.

Skin like granite, a real white-blue, flecked
by knots of new growth. I found my need,
cold in cupped palms, just the way I was taught.

I return to account for whose neck falls around
backwards. Eyes that go cataract bring clouds.

That fat pearl with wings looks like water disappearing in me.

– – –
put a meaningful magnet on your car or metal filing cabinet

read Ilona’s important new blog – PTSD Combat