Glopowrimo 28

Glopowrimo #28 "The words of my roaring"

Here,
I said
I set up these lamps on the floor
diyas
with oil in them
and wicks
I light this imaginary candle
I set up candles
50 or more
290 or more
I will light them all
I myself will play the violins in the background
Let my tears faIl
I will put the flowers on the photos of the children
When they were killed was it not I who was killed?
I will make the memorial cards and keep them on the wall
I will hold the
night vigil alone
I will make the march
multiplying my heart, my grief, into a thousand shadow-people
I will people the streets of this city, this whole world, alone, with shades of the dead and the living dead
I will grieve alone
the glory of the vanquished reign

I will make poetry out of these imaginary things
the diyas, the candles, the flowers, the cards
the vigils, the prayers, the mourning, the marches, the candle lit processions
the shadows
all - that did not take place
I will announce the unspoken message to the world
not to fear the tangled skein of history
not to fear the new protectors
who cannot differentiate
between the terrorist and the innocent
who practise eye for eye
touch one of us
and we will ten of you
blood for blood
real blood
and the whole world blind
I will make my poem about a poem that is not a poem
made of things that do not exist except in words
will bleed silently unreal blood in pols with red sweat and tears
I will again ascend the cross
I will be killed
Was it not Easter, after all?
I will not ask why
I will not even answer back to the sky
(We can do greater things than these)
asking why have you forsaken us?
I will only allow my breath to run out
and this poem to bleed silently
I will become a Muslim
A Hindu
A Jew
A Buddhist
A Jain
A Sikh
An anything
to stop the killing
and the pain
while always remaining a Christian
and a poet
I will let my poem bleed silently
I will call it a house of cards
To stop the carnage
I will hold it up
fragile, and also build a sand-castle of a poem
I will call it a paper plane
I will call it a paper boat
I will call it an origami crane
But I will make the poem
fly and float
I will set up a white flag on the sand-castle
and protect it from the waves of the oceans
I will make the house of cards stand
I have poetry, that sleight of hand

Where are the dead?
Where were the mourners?
Where are the living?
Will we not all go into the same house in the end?
The house of death?
Why do some kill each other
and disturb the peace of the ones like me
who only want to write poetry
and ebb away like an outgoing tide
quietly
leave no mark behind?
Why do you make me roar like a tsunami
when all I want to do is drop like the breeze
a benison on your head?
Come out of the shadows, my faceless enemy
You, even you, I will still embrace
even though you do not understand me
and you will be turned into me or ashes
Are you not only the other side of me
and does not the same blood run in our veins?
Do we all not have mothers, fathers, brothers,
sisters, wives, children and memories of joy and sorrow that match?

Come with me again to the fields of our childhood and its beaches
Somehow may my poem reach you
and let us fly kites
not waste our lives
play marbles, collect shells
tag, you're it, hide and seek, doctor doctor, catch me if you can, hopscotch
children again
and not deal in grown-up lies
No angel exists
if not to help Life
No book is sacred
if not the Book of Life
Only Life is God
which is It as it is
Come, see my tears
and make each drop a pearl
Come, read this poem
made only of words.
I stand defenceless before you
a man of peace
Can you hear me call
across time and space
asking you to give up your anger, hatred, violence, weapons, groups,
twisted hermeneutics, cruel plans and ways
and embrace
the coming future
of Peace?

A meta-poem of an elegy for those who died in NZ, in the Easter bombings etc.