this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters
we honor courage in all its forms
we love and support our troops, just as we love and support the Iraqi people – without exception, or precondition, or judgement.
cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, My Left Wing, and TexasKos.
image and poem below the fold
ATTENTION EDITORS – VISUALS COVERAGE OF SCENES OF DEATH AND INJURY A resident waits for treatment in a hospital after he got wounded by Saturday night’s car bomb attack which killed eight people and wounded 50 others in Baghdad June 18, 2006.
REUTERS/Thaier al-Sudani (IRAQ)
The Blade of Nostalgia
by Chase Twichell
When fed into the crude, imaginary
machine we call the memory,
the brain’s hard pictures
slide into the suggestive
waters of the counterfeit.
They come out glamorous and simplified,
even the violent ones,
even the ones that are snapshots of fear.
Maybe those costumed,
clung-to fragments are the first wedge
nostalgia drives into our dreaming.
Maybe our dreams are corrupted
right from the start: the weight
of apples in the blossoms overhead.
Even the two thin reddish dogs
nosing down the aisles of crippled trees,
digging in the weak shade
thrown by the first flowerers,
snuffle in the blackened leaves
for the scent of a dead year.
Childhood, first love, first loss of love–
the saying of their names
brings an ache to the teeth
like that of tears withheld.
What must happen now
is that the small funerals
celebrated in the left-behind life
for their black exotica, their high relief,
their candles and withered wreaths,
must be allowed to pass through
into the sleeping world,
there to be preserved and honored
in the fullness and color of their forms,
their past lives their coffins.
Goodbye then to all innocent surprise
at mortality’s panache,
and goodbye to the children fallen
ahead of me into the slow whirlpool
I conceal within myself, my death,
into its snow-froth and the green-black
muscle of its persuasion.
The spirits of children
must look like the spirits of animals,
though in the adult human
the vacancy left by the child
probably darkens the surviving form.
The apples drop their blossom-shadows
onto the still-brown grass.
Old selves, this is partly for you,
there at the edge of the woods
like a troop of boy soldiers.
You can go on living with the blade
of nostalgia in your hearts forever,
my pale darlings. It changes nothing.
Don’t you recognize me? I admit
I too am almost invisible now, almost.
Like everything else, I take on
light and color from outside myself,
but it is old light, old paint.
The first shadows are supple ones,
school of gray glimpses, insubstantial.
In children, the quality of darkness
changes inside the sleeping mouth,
and the ghost of child-grime–
that infinite smudge of no color–
blows off into the afterlife.
– – –
listen to the author read her poem
– – –
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put a meaningful magnet on your car or metal filing cabinet
read Ilona’s important blog – PTSD Combat
poetry matters poets against war
view the pbs newshour silent honor roll (with thanks to jimstaro at booman.)
take a private moment to light one candle among many (with thanks to TXSharon)
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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 Bagdhad Burning
read Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches
read Today in Iraq
witness every day
While speaking at the YearlyKos 2006 Convention in Los Vegas, former Virginia Governor Mark Warner said (and I paraphrase from memory): “George Bush, incompetent idiot, blah blah blah, went to war in Iraq when the real threat is in Iran.” (my emphasis)
There was a brief pause after his statement, and I regret that I wasn’t brave or quick-witted enough to yell “Bullshit!” into the silence. But the moment passed, Warner picked up his next thread in perfect cadence, and I bit into my box lunch apple.
So now what?
I’m gonna let him know that I think his statement is bullshit, and why. I’m starting here. If anyone knows of other ways, please put them in this thread.
Thanks.
