Poetry Thursday

"Think of places that most need to see a poem. Think of people who most need to read a poem. Go to those places, to those people and leave your words for them to find." The assignment calls this Guerrilla Poetry. Not my term, but I did pass this one out to a few people and post it on a bulletin board at the coffee shop. Actually, my blog is where I do this. I don't really like the idea of cluttering up public places. It seems a bit pushy.

I wrote this poem while reading about the difficulty of preserving archives, how memory changes over the years, varies from person to person, and is valued depending on who the victors are. The archives themselves can be biased and/or violated, as we learned in the Sandy Berger theft of 9-11 materials from our National Archives, or even by what is selected to be released, printed, digitized and stored within our various levels of government.

Interview with a western journalist
by Norma Bruce

The problem is not
that I know nothing,
but that I know everything.

Now that I've disappeared
into the general population,
it's with the locals I survive.

So when you speak to me of
identity, ethnicity and faction,
who would you have me be?

Unless you've seen your mother raped,
don't talk to me of the evils of
genocide, vengeance or escalation.

Correct your own country's history,
douse your own archives with gasoline,
then we'll talk.

For my past, present and future
I shall burn in Hell,
but at least I'll burn for Croatia.*

*Quote about Croatia from "Archives, documentation and institutions of social memory, essays from the Sawyer Seminar."