Note to Mars fans: my last War of the Worlds poem was in Innocence is Gone, and It’s Not OK, archived August 2019.
Hello Reader,
Got dark emotions?
They say we live in a vale of tears, a vale hard to see clearly.
Strange, to think that today’s younger adults have never known a world without murder-suicide. I can remember when such tragedy was a novelty; newspaper stories would always include a quote from a baffled expert to help people understand. No longer. Now murder-suicides are like discovery X: We know X exists, but just like our ancestors contemplating electricity, we don’t expect to understand it.
Our ancestors would quote the Bible that the years of a person are three score and ten, 70. OK, if so, then middle age starts at 35. At least, I have long thought so, if only to remind myself to see clearly that I could not be a permanent, timeless, graduate student past age 35. (in terms of lifestyle, I mean)
People who turned 18, on this day in the year 2001 A.D., during the year of 9/11, will have spent their adult lives seeing a world of Arab suicide-bombers from 18 to the ripe middle age of 36. The Arab religion is old, but the first such bomber, according to a Muslim member of parliament, was not until the 1980’s during the war between the Muslim nations of Iran and Iraq.
(I used to tell those two countries apart by saying Iran had an “N” in the name, like India, so it was the farthest east)
When a society is ready, the teacher will appear.
A lady who took part in a Women’s Liberation “consciousness raising” group reports something. She well remembers those exciting days. As you know, the feminists would meet in circles, partly to help each other to “deprogram” from society’s messages, partly to face the facts of their experiences, and from those facts to then create concepts. This effort required time. They surfaced unbelievable things that society hadn’t seen—but they never, reports the lady, talked about rings of men and women engaged in child pornography: Society wasn’t ready yet. Like discovery X, we know now that such rings exist, but we don’t yet understand, certainly not enough to prevent them.
Sometimes I think, “How queer, that a person from the age before electricity could know more about our human nature than a space age fellow with a psychology degree.” Yes, I’m thinking of you-know-who: The Bard. No wonder English literature, besides having themes and symbols and such, is so concerned with character. People are the original black box. I certainly want to know more about people, but…
…Sometimes, instead of just slumping on my couch to lazily read a book, I show initiative: I get up and go over and make an effort to stretch out an arm to turn on the TV set.
(“The” TV because I only have the one, “set” because of the collection of glowing tubes in the back)
After the cathode ray tube, the screen, warms up and comes on,
(and then I can safely then turn up the volume)
I don’t want to see Hamlet standing there like a “talking head.”. No, I want movement in my moving pictures, I want car chases and heroes leaning out their car windows wielding pistols, and cars plunging over cliffs.
Since I never get such action in my English literature poetry—why not?—I decided to write my own poems. And let’s face it, sometimes “a dark time of Martians” might stand in for things society can’t look at yet. And that’s OK.
SIDEBAR:
Because I know society is not yet “ready for the knowledge to appear” I felt foolish posting my Bullies and Teachers (archived February) essay, feeling especially foolish when I wrote:
QUOTE
I wonder how many boys and girls, bullied and sexually assaulted, end up losing their innocence … growing up to be well groomed, well employed, socially skilled adults moving among us, adults who are social isolates because they have lost something along the way… A kid above says, “I just can’t be around people anymore.”
UNQUOTE
I had felt foolish from the thought of readers scorning me for daring to say that bullies would sexually assault other children. But they would. Since then, here is a story (link) where a teacher called a six year old victim a silly girl. Her assault from peers during school playtime only became known when she was too sore to sit down.
Also since then, here’s a story (link) where the mother notes her “raped on a play date” son “is not the same boy”
Of course I like our dear school teachers… and I’m also feeling strident today, like a new feminist.
Poem
The Highway
People say Martians have no emotions,
But I know better.
I was on a hill looking over the middle of
a slow busy highway running between high banks of grass.
I had been too passive to grab a life-saving ride myself.
Now all the cars were crawling away from the direction of the Martian crater.
From behind a hill to the rear of the fleeing cars
a Fighting Machine rocked and swung into view.
For a moment the Martian inside contemplated the fleeing ants.
A metal arm raised in a slow arc
holding a projector for the Heat Ray,
I forgot to breathe.
The Ray was invisible in the daylight
stabbing the lead car—it exploded in an orange petroleum fireball
too far away for me to hear anything but a distant thoom.
The adjacent cars, one by one, were blasted,
blowing black clouds
curling up low over the remains.
The way forward was now blocked.
The Martian turned its attention to the hindmost cars.
There too cars blossomed orange under dark clouds.
Then with the cars all prevented from escaping
there was no need,
(—or so thought the humane side of me)
to do any more damage.
The Martian proceeded to ray the whole line,
Car by car by car,
from glee or spite or lust
for power.
I was too far away to hear any death-yells.
People say Martians have no souls.
True, so true.
Don’t say they have no emotions,
not after what I saw.
Sean Crawford
September 11,
Calgary
2019
Footnotes
From the previous century, the 20th, some examples of social programming:
`Men remind, women nag; men get angry, women get hysterical…et cetera.
~Women must never be aggressive, and even being softly assertive is being aggressive.
~In a religious colony: Women must be sweet, and their standing up for basic rights or even asking questions to clarify basic rights is not sweet.
~The legal standard of “a reasonable adult” is “a reasonable male adult.” (No longer the case)
~To be strong and effective, professional and businesslike… is to be unwomanly and unfeminine.
~Women are not reasonable creatures.
~A woman must never command a starship. …Let alone command the starship Voyager for several years during prime time. (Star Trek)
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