two poems grappling with the political power of language

"I am a Cameraman" By Douglas Dunn

They suffer, and I catch only the surface.
The rest is inexpressible, beyond
What can be recorded. You can't be them.
If they'd talk to you, you might guess
What pain is like though they might spit on you.

Film is just a reflection
Of the matchless despair of the century.
There have been twenty centuries since charity began.
Indignation is day-to-day stuff;
It keeps us off the streets, it keeps us watching.

Film has no words of its own.
It is a silent waste of things happening.
Without us, when it is too late to help.
What of the dignity of those caught suffering?
It hurts me. I robbed them of privacy.

My young friends think Film will be all of Art.
It will be revolutionary proof
Their films will not guess wrongly and will not lie.
They'll film what is happening behind barbed wire.
They'll always know the truth and be famous.

Politics softens everything.
Truth is known only to its victims.
All else is photographs-- a documentary
The starving and the playboys perish in.
Life disguises itself with professionalism.

Life tells the biggest lies of all,
And draws wages from itself.
Truth is a landscape the saintly tribes live on,
And all the lenses of Japan and Germany
Wouldn't know how to focus on it.

Life flickers on the frame like beautiful hummingbirds.
That is the film that always comes out blank.
The painting the artist can't get shapes to fit.
The poem that shrugs off every word you try.
The music no one has ever heard.


"Definition" (by the author of this weblog, jen)

I.
Break me
With your words
For I have no love of my own borders
Any longer
No love for that which carves itself, territorial rights,
In the still smoking flesh of a child burned into its mother’s breast.
Forgotten by CNN. Time. Newsweek. Unfit for the nightly news.

Shield from our sensitive minds
The Other that stares with eyes
that power and greed have carelessly removed.

II.
Arbitrary boundaries kill
But atrocity has such lure
The spectacle romances
Drawing us as tourists to your world
Staring down the mass graves of your eyes
Searching your bones and scars for absolution
or at the very least, absolute proof.
Drawing authority on the backs of corpses demands a new packaging, a new face,
Complete with ears unable to hear and a mouth that fails to speak for you.

III.
Freedom has slept caged so long.
Imprisoned by her own grand mythology,
She no longer remembers the truth.
Instead, she has become the rapist
Of those refusing to be force-fed
capitalism as religion, victory as history, victimization as truth.
Her hair is the flag that marks ungrateful peoples, conquered.
Her language is that of the most civilized.
Yet beware her smile for she has been known to turn
On even those who have shared her cause, her wants, and for fear of her
have fought, died, killed and abused.

IV.
Please. Feed me your words.
I am tired of anger, envy, pity, and silence.
I have eaten the official diet of centrism far too long now. It makes my spirit hurt
and my brain swell against my tired skull.
It is not that I hate this that marks me as I am.
I crave instead, your words
to remind me, describe me, and humanize me,
in tones unspoiled by the surreal.

How many (more) lives will it take
to drown all rhetoric in tears?

******************************************************
I like the Dunn poem because there is a struggle and an honesty present within it. I'm assuming his references to Japan and Germany are concerning WWII but I have not dated the poem yet so I'm unsure. I like his tone though, alot.

As for my poem, it was born from sitting in Barnes and Noble listening to some women speak what I assumed to be Serbo-Croatian. I have never wished to understand a language more than tonight, listening to them. The beauty of language, any language, is always striking and humbling. Yet there is also the power of language to conquer, deny, destroy, officialize, dehumanize and humanize. The breakdown of the poem is meant to equate the breakdown of arbitrary borders and boundaries in the political power of language. With understanding, we see the worth in life that goes beyond soundbites, theorizing, and spectacle. Understanding is almost impossible without communication. I think though that there is a space in which people can communicate without having to understand or speak the same language, it is the space born of joy, loss, fear, love...in short, it is the space of empathy united in a shared humanity. I don't think that is idealism but a sharp realism, made more real by every new atrocity and every new war, genocide, disaster, etc, that we like to assume will be the last.

Our society claims to understand its history and yet it is inundated with fantasy that masquarades as reality--from "reality" t.v. to the nightly news, and all of it is staged! So too are these lines and boundaries that separate countries and peoples and societies from one another. This same fantasy echoes when we become tourists in other countries, in other people's reality, expected them to conform to our expectation and anticipation of them, whether that be through language, or economic and military hegemony. It is all fantasy.

The end of the poem is really a request to wake up to a reality, above and beyond the toxic diet of the televised world. There is a somber tone to this poem but it isn't intended to depress. My hope is that it is more like an offering or humbleness that admits wholeheartedly there is so much beauty in this world that no one country or people should consider themselves the priviledged control center of it, either by language, history, religion or conquest. Idealism suggests that you can combat hatred with a fierce humanity and yet history questions this with atrocity after atrocity. Where are the victory lines drawn? At what point? What else can you fight with that keeps you from falling to hatred and despair, thus becoming that which hates you, that which you despise? I don't have answers just questions. I think questions are a good thing though and that uncertain words harbor shadows of hope.


much peace.
jen

"...whispering not truth but a need for truth when one word is many things."
--Carolyn Forche
quoted from "XXVII" in her book of poetry titled "The Angel of History"