Poem

I wrote a poem!

Worked late tonight, went to an Uptown Latin bar, and wrote my little heart out. Don't know why I was thinking of this picture, but it won a Pulitzer in 93 or 94. Then the photog killed himself. I saw a documentary piece on it. So sad.

Sudan, Child crawling toward refugee camp

(For Kevin Carter, Bang Bang Club photographer, September 13, 1960 in Johannesburg – July 27, 1994; suicide)


You failed
to see through false modesties
your arrogant talents tossing you between darkness and light, and into
Africa; where blood-thirst and slaked limbs
ran down the lens of your Nikon, fields of the dead and the dying
mining celestial deserts; and always, always, your Nikon

clicking clicking clicking

Gunmen across the avenue, gunmen at your side as
bullets traced the epilogue of reporters, translators, soldiers, heroes, killers
children; beloved friends, and everywhere, the unnamed everymen, not even yet,
if ever, footnotes in history

Gunmen at the foot and head of your bed as you
slept, gunmen in the jeep next to you
as your zoom settled on the far-off child, the bastard doll
bloated with death, but not dead, a feast for the bird
biding its time, history calling you three together

clicking clicking clicking

You were hated
in your Europe. Comfortable young mothers and fat old sons
feted and condemend you; an orgy of nothing
in the soft brittleness of cultural criticism and afternoon teas

As if the one lives could have meaning in the maw of death,
the canvas of suffering,
the particular above the general.
As if they did not.

how could they know
oh how could they know

of the fields of limbs; the ecstasy and empty suddenness of endings
the void of holy in the heart of the holy

clicking clicking clicking

your gun found your mouth
and by your own hand,

your own hand made history

-- END --