Tag Archives: writing

Interview with a Zyklon B Handler

You must keep your reasons for doing it
in the forefront of your mind at all times.
There may be things you like about your victims,
things your mind will tell you to try and stop you;
there may be consequences you’d rather not deal with—
mourning families, a guilty conscience,
pleading, begging,
a sleepless night or two,
that sort of thing—
but when the moment comes to kill
the time for such considerations is past.
The death will have pros and cons,
which is why it’s always a sacrifice.
You make a compromise with the universe
when you decide to take a life:
“I’m willing to give up this person’s good traits
to get rid of their bad ones.”
So you tell yourself whatever you need to;
you do what you have to, and,
depending on how well you’ve convinced yourself,
the universe may hold you to a debt of guilt.
You may wish there was another way,
but you can’t just kill a part of someone—
you cannot choose which portions to get rid of—
you have to kill all of them,
the whole body, you understand?
You cannot kill the Jewish in someone and keep the body.
And the Jews were all one body.
There were good people,
men, women, children, even infants…
you had to kill all of them.
They were sacrifices for the future of Deutschland,
a burnt offering made to the god of the Reich.
We didn’t hate the human part of them,
just the Jewish part, and
we hated it enough—
we knew the reasons well enough—
that we were willing to sacrifice the humans
to be forever rid of the Jew.

Campus Tree

It grew in the space between walkways
where students shuffled past year round
hurrying to classes, learning
to fit into their chosen professions—
but the tree didn’t fit in. Not anymore.
It leaned too far south, they said,
and its grasping fingers had claimed
too much of the campus sky.
On a warm day in spring before its leaves budded,
a worker drove slowly to the spot
in crowds that broke around the service car.
The man stepped out and spat on the ground,
scrutinizing the trunk and branches.
He moved around the tree, peering down the walkways,
to see how it measured up to the others in its row.
More campus workers came during classes
and threw red ropes up the leaning trunk.
They hacked and hauled off the abnormal branches,
checking their work against the row
until the tree earned a passing grade.

Matador

Me muestra los cuernos,
goteando sangre rojo.
Lo muestro mi muleta,
y veo el enojo
de un monstruo
en los ojos.
Con una pata hace
una nube con el polvo,
Baja su cabeza,
y me embiste el toro.

__________________________

English translation:

Bull-fighter

He shows me his horns,
dripping red blood.
I show him my cape
and see the anger
of a monster
in his eyes.
With a hoof he makes
a cloud with the dust,
lowers his head,
and the bull charges at me.

 

Coming Home

I claim time with my girls is the best of each day,
but I’m often so tired I come in and lay
with a screen in my hands on the couch by the door
till they beg me to come play with them on the floor;
and it’s not till I’ve clambered down off of my throne
with my phone on a shelf that I’m finally home.

To the soldier who rescued our flag in the rain

It fell down when the bracket broke
while I was away at work.
I called my wife as soon as it started raining
to have her shelter anything that was outside.
She was at home taking care of two babies
by herself and couldn’t answer the phone.
The fabric of the flag got soaked in the pouring rain,
and the extra weight bent the bracket down
until the flag slipped out and fell
to the ground under the dripping eaves of the house.
You saw it there—the flag for which which you had given
your sweat and blood and so much of your life,
the flag you defended overseas,
the flag for which your buddies died in the dirt—
you saw it there, caked in mud, and
you didn’t even hesitate.

Though I wasn’t there I can almost see you,
propping your collar up against the
soaking sheets of incoming water
as you slammed the car door
then raced across the swampy grass
in shoes far less suited than combat boots
to pick up the flag and roll it carefully
before knocking on the door
to hand it to my wife.
You told her that you were a soldier,
and that the mud was
“no place for a flag to be.”

Dear soldier who rescued our flag in the rain,
Lest you consider me indifferent,
I want you to know that I have the deepest respect
for men and women like you
who have sacrificed to sustain a country
in which I can leave my wife and daughters at home,
and know they’ll be dry and safe from the storms of the world.

Dear soldier who rescued our flag in the rain,
I want you to know that I honor our flag
and all it represents,
which is why I fastened the bracket
to the front of my house and proudly
fly it there as often as I can, and
I want to tell you how grateful I am
that you braved yet another storm
to uphold and protect our flag.

Love and Hatred

Which is more powerful, 
love 
or hatred?

Hatred of a race,
a circumstance,
a condition,
has rallied millions under its banners 
to fight
and kill
in ways we are ashamed 
to think or talk about. 
It has formed nations, 
raised armies, 
showered wealth on victors,
heaped sorrows on the unfortunate,
hollowed untold graves for both,
and filled them
with thier sons and daughters.

But love
of money,
of power, 
of land, 
of resources, 
of God(s)
has rallied,
murdered, 
and buried 
just as many.

Perhaps love and hatred 
are equally matched
because they are extremes 
of the exact same emotion.

Utilitarianism

Should I write because I can
or only when I have something to say?
Do I write to build the facade of a writer
or because I need to express my thoughts
and feel I do that best in written form?
If the latter, why doesn’t my journal suffice?
Do I need my words to be read
and appreciated by strangers?
But writing is an act of faith
in the permanence of
the words being written,
and inherent in that faith is a trust
that someone will (eventually) read
and enjoy what’s recorded.
Is art a selfish process then,
used to inflate the ego of the creator,
or is it all presumption,
undertaken by those who
think they have valuable insights
that no one else has had?
Why do I even ask these questions?
Writing makes me happy, so I write—
but even that is rather utilitarian of me to say.