The River at Babel
Black, now, and moving right to left from my window I see it. It carries the silt of civilization down the slowly sloping ground moving through the time we are apart.
This river does not know you, America. My anger and the blood of hundreds of thousands moves right to left with the current, moving away from my brief existence here and carrying cries of women, children and torture rooms away from this place; carrying out the badness; making room for something.
Black, now, and no moon. I see small waves of excitement and currents of hope across the carved channel of fish and thick water. The small children run across the water in my vision like nymphs in a seafarers dream, happy in their ignorance. They are carried through their lives on the currents of hope flowing inside the blackness of potential, unseen to most, visible from the right point of view.
This river does not know you, America. Our expectations, paradigms, rationales and excuses sink to the bottom of hundreds of thousands of years of culture and contention, discord and bargain; the give and take of life on the edge. Analogy and rhyme are lost inside of this river. Baselines of data echo off of the hard shapes of life here in this place, in this reality. The sonar pings of consultants and organizations deliver only the outline of a shadow of life twisted in the current of thirty years of this dark river flowing evil and twisting like the first serpent through this withered and untended garden.
Black, now, and no moon. I follow the pieces of a disposed country bobbing and floating next to the excitement and hope, sharing the space of time and life; Adam with Eve, Man with Woman, good with bad. I see them all from my window. The children of this place dance across the roofs of the torture chambers, play games with discarded rules and policies, take false aim at us with their squirt guns.
This river does not know you, America. Your intentions and plans, ideas, schemes and machinations take formed shape in the reticle of the rocket in the young boy’s hand as he squeezes off the lives of your sons and daughters. The boy knows this river. He knows that his time is now, not tomorrow; not waiting on your “almosts” and “studies” and “get back to you’s”. His intentions and plans, ideas, schemes and machinations run a full twenty-four hours out and no further. His long-term development consists of some dirt, a brick, a can of soda, and words of fear and hate and intolerance and rage, fueled by, of course, money.
Black, now, and no moon.
-30-
Copyright, Tom Kinton, June, 2003, Al-Hillah, Iraq
Tom Kinton was deployed with an Army unit in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
This river does not know you, America. My anger and the blood of hundreds of thousands moves right to left with the current, moving away from my brief existence here and carrying cries of women, children and torture rooms away from this place; carrying out the badness; making room for something.
Black, now, and no moon. I see small waves of excitement and currents of hope across the carved channel of fish and thick water. The small children run across the water in my vision like nymphs in a seafarers dream, happy in their ignorance. They are carried through their lives on the currents of hope flowing inside the blackness of potential, unseen to most, visible from the right point of view.
This river does not know you, America. Our expectations, paradigms, rationales and excuses sink to the bottom of hundreds of thousands of years of culture and contention, discord and bargain; the give and take of life on the edge. Analogy and rhyme are lost inside of this river. Baselines of data echo off of the hard shapes of life here in this place, in this reality. The sonar pings of consultants and organizations deliver only the outline of a shadow of life twisted in the current of thirty years of this dark river flowing evil and twisting like the first serpent through this withered and untended garden.
Black, now, and no moon. I follow the pieces of a disposed country bobbing and floating next to the excitement and hope, sharing the space of time and life; Adam with Eve, Man with Woman, good with bad. I see them all from my window. The children of this place dance across the roofs of the torture chambers, play games with discarded rules and policies, take false aim at us with their squirt guns.
This river does not know you, America. Your intentions and plans, ideas, schemes and machinations take formed shape in the reticle of the rocket in the young boy’s hand as he squeezes off the lives of your sons and daughters. The boy knows this river. He knows that his time is now, not tomorrow; not waiting on your “almosts” and “studies” and “get back to you’s”. His intentions and plans, ideas, schemes and machinations run a full twenty-four hours out and no further. His long-term development consists of some dirt, a brick, a can of soda, and words of fear and hate and intolerance and rage, fueled by, of course, money.
Black, now, and no moon.
-30-
Copyright, Tom Kinton, June, 2003, Al-Hillah, Iraq
Tom Kinton was deployed with an Army unit in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
posted by tomk at 8:10 AM
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