A War of the Worlds Casualty

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Hello Reader,

Got some realism?

It is a convention for entertainment writing—memoir not so much— to minimize the true awfulness of casualties. As Hollywood does. Then again, in that oldest of western literature, Homer’s bronze age tale, the gore, to modern ears, is terribly well described. But of course Homer wasn’t making entertainment: He was composing a classic.

As for the future, as when we are watching a war movie, or enjoying The Sopranos, we would do well to still have, at some level, an awareness of how things would actually turn out. Such knowledge, besides guiding us in voting against war and crime, can come in handy. For example, after the cold war finally ended, a friend confided that he chose medical school because he reasoned: If people of the future were reduced to scrabbling in the rubble then a physician would be among those few the survivors would want to keep alive.

As for the past, I keep in mind a lesson of “always become good at your craft”: I still laugh and shiver at the “too grim for prime time” story of the frontier dentist who had a gunslinger for a patient. The dentist pulled the wrong tooth by mistake. Then he pulled the right tooth. Not good craft. The gunslinger went off to the saloon, where he brooded on the popular slogan that life isn’t supposed to be fair. “Oh yea?” thought the gunslinger “Says who?” Then he went back to the dentist, pulled out his gun, and proceeded to pull two of dentist’s teeth. 

… My previous Martian invasion poems had lots of entertaining action. Today I present a poem just a touch more real, a tad less commercial, about someone who survived the panic of the invasion.

After I Panicked and Strained My Back

My body, my body,

hurts like hell, sometimes.

Hurts dimly, all the time.

In the dark,

hard to sleep,

afraid of agony-freeze.

Freeze, try to roll, freeze again.

Is this it?

My new normal?

Dare I dream of a full recovery?

I dare not, no false hopes.

I freeze mid-crouch,

the back spasms passing a doorframe.

But at least I can walk.

Am I old before my time?

No, I am outside time,

just living this day.

I have no future anymore.

Sean Crawford

September

Calgary

2019