NVN Tuesday: 2 poems as war rages
“Red Blood of Humans” by George Salamon and “Absorbed” by Theodore Eisenberg
RED BLOOD OF HUMANS
by George Salamon
Icarius (Diomedes Wounding Aphrodite When She Tries To Recover The Body Of Aeneas) by Arthur Heinrich Wilhelm Fitger via wikigallery.
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"Israeli-Hamas war death toll nears 1,500..." CBS News, October 9, 2023
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Red hot blood of old men, red hot blood of toddlers, red hot blood of grandmas, red hot blood of soldiers, red hot blood of musicians, we spill you in Israel and we spill you in Gaza, we spill you in Ukraine and Russia while they're counting the corpses and wait until they reach the numbers when the world's institutions urge an end to bloodshed and demand return to the old status quo. There's no elixir for bloodlust, there's no drug to cure madness, there's no vaccine to calm the fever of death and destruction. We never conquered humanity's cruel face, its heart's hungry gorge, the human form of its terror. We heard answers, but watched as the messengers died on the cross, by fire or by bullet, we are left alone by and to ourselves. Nothing is more terrifying in a soul-less and bleeding world.
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George Salamon was born in Vienna in 1934, as Communists and Fascists were shooting at each other in low-income housing areas. The Holocaust was a decade later, the Israeli-Arab wars of "annihilation" followed, then the bloody wars in Asia and Africa for wealth and economic "supremacy," and the endless Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed and terror for ownership of the "Holy Land." The carousel is still spinning.
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ABSORBED
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by Theodore Eisenberg
Cy Twombly, Achilles Mourning the Death of Patroclus, 1962. Cy Twombly Foundation via Two Coats of Paint.
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When so many massacred in one episode, words also assailants. If you squint at the mourners— feet, hands and heads break away, dissipate into the sanctuary’s hazy walls—and you begin to understand how families dissolve into scapes. But if you hearken with care, you hear cries from the wooden panels, whispers from the crevices. These the unsaid, now spoken, silences of once. But if you attend with a foolish heart, and hear song and laughter teem from wood and brick, you dream.
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Theodore Eisenberg retired from the practice of labor law in 2014 to write. When words seem too restrictive, he paints. His poems have appeared in The Aurorean, Thema, Rattle, Slipstream Press, Crosswinds Press, Lighthouse Literary Journal, Main Street Rag, concis, Philadelphia Stories, Aji Magazine, Every Writer, Blue Mountain Review, Valley Voices, Hamilton Stone Review, Rust & Moth, The Ekphrastic Review, and many other journals. His chapbook This was published by Finishing Line Press in 2017.