In the wake of this week's violence, I see folks (me included!) really struggling, struggling to reconnect with the love that will see us all through this dark place. It is so easy to blame, to diminish, to hate, to generalize, to globalize. I've seen it on both sides, and it gets us nowhere. Demons and Others is the working title of a novel I am writing. There is a poem I wrote as part of the the story that I want to share - share it because we are at a crossroads. We can decide to come together in love and find our way back to human connection. Or we can blame and otherise and be consumed by our imaginary demons. Obviously, I hope for the former. In love, Kirstin
Demons and Others I. Price-tagged as the other Humanity yields to vectors of limited dimension and superficial value Heads are sold and bartered as commodities without history or feeling in a market that shaves razor thin layers of skin to trade a bloody currency capitalized by difference. II. In the teachings of God and Allah market traders find a blood thirst only assuaged when cultural hearts - be it twin towers, a holy book, or a holy man - lie crumbled and pulp-like, gushing tradition to the forgotten The limbs of women and children: collateral: as nations mortgage their souls to define normal and win holy wars of various and ridiculous names - the war on drugs, desert storm, jihad. III. Longing for distance from gruesome details and destruction nations picket and brutalize their citizens to cement the moral certainty that their neighbors are not the ones beheading journalists, raping children, throwing acid in the faces of young women, shooting up classrooms full of children or theaters full of consumers. No, no cause for concern. It is the others reigning this terror down on our heads and creating our shared suffering. IV. And citizens, oceans across, buy these answers not caring that the definitions of the others were stolen – at gunpoint, at knifepoint, at bombpoint – Whatever. The ease of erasure is sickeningly easy And in the shadow of this ease, whole societies condone torture in all its nameable and unnameable forms, As citizens stand by, participate, look away. Headlines aside, It's the others who are the demons. Not us, not our sons, daughters, husbands, wives. And so it unfolds again, humanity's cyclical destruction, under the cloak of anonymity and righteousness. And on it goes. (c) Kirstin Eidenbach, 2014
4 Comments
Elisabeth
7/9/2016 09:38:14 am
A beautiful heart-wrenching poem. Thanks for posting.
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Sara
7/9/2016 06:15:36 pm
Haunting, too relevant, I wish we could erradicate the seeds that'grow' the hate and all accept a part in a global healing.
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Sara
7/9/2016 06:16:11 pm
Haunting, too relevant, I wish we could erradicate the seeds that let the hate grow and all accept a part in a global healing.
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Sara
7/9/2016 06:17:07 pm
hauntingly meaningful. Thanks for sharing
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Kirstin EidenbachOur ED keeps you up to date on ATLaS' activities, along with pointed commentary on community programs and reform. Archives
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