Title: Language & Abuse: A Poem Author: Guest AuthorSend it to your lib friends...
Abuse
by "PO'ed Poet"
in the newspaper: 'nazi', 'gulag'
in the kitchen: 'nuke'
in our minds, the words
overused
broken loose from horror
despair, anguish
gas chambers and crematoria
work details in the snow
shadows on blasted brick
molten light; blindness, burning
starvation
suffering amid ashes
when have you been hungry
seen your body emptied of flesh,
risen in rags to labor shoeless
enslaved, in snow,
found yourself burned blinded sick
calling for your children
when?
when?
and, if you have not lived
with horror sharing your bed
death for your bunk mate
risking murder to pray
how dare you use those words
turn them cheap and trivial
wear down the bone of their meaning
to disparage what is merely bad
how dare you bring us closer to forgetting
what evil is
closer to repeating the past
"The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." --Jesus
"Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious" --George Orwell
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." --F. Scott Fitzgerald