– Or Emily is Going To Accost You With More Description –
Yes! Another exercise in description. It’s happening. Hold on to your hats.
“It’s just a ditch, really.”
Well, of course it’s just a ditch, if you’re just looking at it. It fits the colloquial description of a ditch – low depression, usually made for draining water out of an otherwise flat field, but in this case they’re probably just totally normal scars in the landscape. Except they’re not. Except that a synonym for ditch is, in fact, trench.
It’s a trench – and what you fail to see for your act of just looking is that they are important and are more deserving of description than your – ever so clever – ‘just a ditch, really.’ This is a trench where people lived, ate, slept, read, and died. Rotted away, in some cases. Drowning in their own fluids in others. It’s a trench, in a country field in the east of France, where soldiers fought one of the worst wars in human history. More than a ditch, really. Closer to a grave, actually.
I could show you a picture, but I don’t want to – perhaps because standing here in a grass covered trench on a narrow brick pathway that, oh, close to 100 years ago now, was covered in at least an inch of water, mud on both sides, and miles upon miles of barbed wire, makes me a tad emotional. Though, that’s as much of an understatement as ‘ditch,’ considering I am about as close to all out sobbing right now as I ever plan to be in public. The history and importance of this place has that effect on me, I think.
You’re going on about how you don’t see the point in memorializing this place and I consider describing the effects of chlorine gas on the body and exactly what that looks like while you are desperately trying to flee the grenades and machine gun fire of the Germans just that side of No Man’s Land, but I don’t. I don’t because you don’t internalize history like I do. The images I would paint would shock you, gross you out, but little more than that. The horror of ancient battle formations meeting brutally efficient new technologies is lost on you, as it is lost on many, because it won’t happen again. A World War III would be all atomic bombs, incineration, and nuclear fallout – history won’t necessarily repeat itself.
But it still moves me to tears, because these trenches, these unassuming ditches in the French countryside, show cased the brutality of the human race, and the terrible things soldiers were made to suffer in the war that began, frankly, because everyone wanted ‘a good war.’ And they got one. Because it was a good war, really, if you just look at it.
May 1, 2013
You Will Read “Sonny’s Blues” in Hell
emigee93 co-op writing Literature, Self, Uncategorized 0 Comments
– Or A Summery of American Literature II, in Poetic Verse –
Author’s Note: I wrote this poem with my friend Nikki and A. It is a summary of our American Literature class this semester and it is rife with swearing and the word Cock. If you are offended by this, don’t read the poem. Sorry Not Sorry, E.
*~*
I have seen the best students of my major destroyed
by madness
Madness, caused not by stress or sadness, but I have seen
them lose their minds to short stories
Most notably the Greek epic, “Sonny’s Blues,” the true pinnacle
of the entirety of human literature
Has been drilled into the minds of unsuspecting English students,
expecting more, but receiving less.
It is the mark of human nature to repeat our mistakes;
thus we returned day after day.
We tried to make sense of an increasingly devious puzzle,
but the mind of our professor could not be cracked.
“I’m a nice guy, but fuck up on MLA and I will finish you,”
the prophecy foretold.
I saw students stew in their incompetancies and struggle
with their citations.
The types of things that enrapture us: the contemporary
corpocracy of the U.S., and why folks get high.
I swear I heard screeching in the walls; “Power-powerless
stick, you’re on the wrong end!”
With the very hearts of the powerless stick pulled from their bodies
good to eat w/ all the junk we’re shootin’ for a thousand years.
Our heads bashed in with concrete and music, It’s gonna be a world
of hurt, a world of hurt, a world of hurt.
And a sphinx. Because Egypt gave us schwarma and gyros and hot
dogs, because Design governs things so small as digestion.
Yo.
We sat through made up mechanisms, and historicisms, and so many
isms it would make the bureaucracy of our corporate
government blush.
Moloch! Depriving us of Slaughter House Five! Moloch! Capitalism taking
over my TV! Moloch! I just wanted to watch King of the Hill!
Sonny! States orbiting the Earth! Sonny! Blues and Digressions and Fire!
Sonny! I just wanted to read and analyze and learn!
Cock! I was just happy I could use Cock in an Academic paper!
Poems we haven’t gone over, Final papers, Monster of English,
The final death of God!
I’ll do minimum work for minimum wage! Skip the 3rd paper,
Take the 95, thank God! Hail Moloch!
Holy! The last four days of our Hell in Pamplin Hall, that the end
is in sight, Be free, my people, be free from that which
bores you!
I have a dream…That one day…It will be a comfortable
temperature in that room.
That, one day, this Appalachian hillbilly might teach something other
than Post-Modern half-truths
That, one day, we may leave the classroom without hearing the devil
whispering in our ear “Mooney teaches ‘Howl’ in Hell!”
You’ll read “Sonny’s Blues” in Hell! In the heart + fire of Pamplin 3001!
Think for yourselves, but trust me ‘bout the government! Or
I’ll ensure you feel a world of hurt.
Revolt, Brothers and Sisters! Change the face of Society! Of Hell!
Of Moloch! Of Sonny! Of Ginsburg, Nemerov, Frost, and Still!
And I ask you, where the fuck was Vonnegut?! And 1865 – 1945? Two
World Wars, The Great Depression, Casablanca? Amen. Amen.
That, in 45 minutes, 3 students wrote a poem and listened to their professor
rant about life, death, cancer, the bloody fuckin’ 1 percent, ANYTHING
but literature.
But, on the bright side, the silver linings playbook, Andy got to use Cock in
a paper! We’ve won a battle- Let’s win the war!
Amen!
Preach!
God bless us every 1.