One
VISITING THE TORTURE MUSEUM- in 1996
We hang on the edge of our nightmare
repeating itself in bloody rivalry
greedy for death.
There are those who will say
nothing can be done,
joy and sorrow forever in contrast,
creates perception, and yet,
this is a poem about the thousands of land-mines
that still explode every day in abandoned war zones
all over the pockmarked earth, land-
mines explode fire, kill, maim
cripple. Legs of a boy, arms of a girl are
blown to bloody pulp. A Vietnamese farmer
in his rice paddy never knows
when his plow or foot might strike the metal
which will kill or cripple him. POW!
Flesh flies everywhere. Pretty fireworks and big noise!
And so, this is a poem about
The Torture Museum of Unnatural History
where human genius is used to devise devices,
forged of metal, carved of wood. They sit under fluorescent
light revealing monstrous pain existentially inflicted
on frail flesh of self loathing.
A man's eyes are poked out with a hot iron.
by a man who hates himself or is paid to.
Genitals burned with stun guns.
Electric shock applied to the quivering brain.
Spikes driven through hands with hammers.
Fingernails ripped from the delicate fingers
that play Mozart concerti.
This is a poem about how much hate
of breasts and genitals,
hate of wombs and anuses;
hate of child,
hate of brother,
as Cain slew Abel in cocky sibling rivalry,
still breathes in you and me. Tribal
hate lurks in the brain.
This is a poem about natural order
fierce and unyielding,
sending flood, hail, tornado, earthquake
upon men who could bond together to build
shelters for children.
This is a poem about the bountiful gifts
of the cornucopia shaped like the feared slimy vagina,
mouth which is toothless though flowering fruits
spill to earth from bushes that sometimes have thorns.
This is a poem that wants to scream and cry and shed
torrents of tears for tortured slaves,
murdered, abused children, raped women,
hated darker men who die without guitars or slippers
defending territory, family,
whose teeth grin at our guilt from their graves.
This is a poem against all the poems that do not care,
that are art for art's sake, only, that do not grieve or show
poems that care to find some new way to talk,
this poems says to fear cynicism more than death,
says that a poem should mean,
not just be.
This is a poem asking a way.
This is to say
that we're dead
before we die
if we give up idealistic hope and accept monstrosity.
This is a poem that can't be powerful enough to mean
what is is until the bloodbath of history
runs purple and flowers into roses
in the vases of grave skulls--
that ends feebly,
asking a question,
believing that a kindergarten idea like co-
operation can replace competition in the world marketplace.
This is a deliberately naive poem that says land can be made
to blossom with fruit enough for all,
can be kept free of explosives, radiation, poisons.
Diseases can be cured,
greed harnessed.This is a poem that says there is a way to
bury plutonium in sand and glass forever--
enough food to be grown under the sun where
no poem can top the wonder of the greatest poem
of all: photosynthesis, first link
in the chain that fuses us to the web
of all life churning in silent space
wet and yearning,
tears made of the ocean's salt
that come like jewels glistening
from the feeling heart
to soothe the scars
of our manmade murders.
This is a poem that wants to say there is a new way
to ask dangerous questions,
or celebrate what's wholesome and comely
from the rocking ocean, a poem that tries to yell: Look!
Mira! See the leer dripping down the face of God,
the children bleeding in His teeth,
the priest molesting the boy,
the daughter raped by the father.
This is a poem that can't be strong enough
to say what it wants to say,
that needs you
the reader to finish it
with fierce love
beyond
rage.
This is a poem
asking
you
to
help find a way
to end
the horror show
in the Torture Museum of Un-
natural History.
Because
we all
die
to live
and be
some-
body,
this is a poem
that wants.
Copyright (c) 2002 by Daniela Gioseffi from her book of poems: GOING ON, VIA
Folios/Bordighera Press, West Lafayette, IN.
________________________________________________
Daniela Gioseffi is the acclaimed author of twelve books of poetry and prose. Her anthology,
Women on War: International Writings won the American Book Award. On the deepest level,
Daniela Gioseffi is a poet and teacher who advocates the dignity of all human beings.
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