Counterpoint Epiphany [Today's News Poem, November 12, 2010]

Counterpoint Epiphany [Today's News Poem, November 12, 2010]

I open my eyes, and by seeing, am seen;
Leverage circuitry, witness the outbreaks
Of rekindled relationships: cholera.

The names of diseases appear on my screen
Lacking a meaning beyond definition.
I am watched as I voyeur the monitor

Considering menace. Computers are dry,
Likewise myself: we both share dispositions.
We are pulling the themes from polyphonies

Of history, memory. Everything old,
New, in-between is an echo, a counter
To the trend and all lead to epiphanies.

"Medical workers in Haiti on Friday called the upward trend in deaths and illnesses in the cholera outbreak "alarming" as the earthquake-devastated nation's already strained health system overflowed with the sick. "
— Moni Basu, CNN, November 12, 2010 3:34 p.m. EST
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/11/12/haiti.cholera/

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Haitian Fright Song [Today's News Poem]

Haitian Fright Song

By Khakjaan Wessington

The Haitian Fight Song
Is curious, because of whom they might fight.
The French,
The Americans,
But mostly themselves
And their denuded dirt.

They were liberated into poverty
As the White Man unburdened himself
Of the people,
While keeping the plantations
And conspiring against voodoo.

A man interviewed said that only the Haitians screamed
During the aftershocks. He said he wanted to emulate
The foreigners. It's not easy to divorce one's self from one's
Animal instincts. To be reptilian where others are mammalian.
To be pitiless in work and to pitilessly extract work.
To fight man and soil
And child and woman
And most of all to fight the self.
To be better than human
To be inhuman.
To dry the ducts of pity
So that when our turn comes
And we are smothered with rubble
And we are trapped beneath our own excrement
Nobody will save us.
Not even ourselves.
And nobody should save us.
I didn't save anyone.
They shouldn't save me.

--

The edit to this poem, in full metered verse, can only be read in the print edition, on sale here:




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