I have questions...

a poem, and yeah, questions...

a line and a yellow dandelion

Wild Flowers


Will flowers grow, 
Wild in Guantanamo, 
The same way 
they did in Terezin? 
Will children draw pictures, 
On scraps, 
Of imagined trees filled with fruit 
To remind their hunger of goodness,
Like they did 
in Terezin?
Will they write poems filled, 
With memories,
Of roses and integrity,
Like they did 
in Terezin?
Will their lullabies hum, 
to the metronome
Of a guardsman's pace, 
and sleep’s dark dreams be safer,
Than daylight’s demons, 
Like it was 
in Terezin? 
Tell me, will flowers grow,
Wild in Guantanamo- 
Dandelion yellow hard, 
pressing through cracked concrete. 
A barely there rebellion,
Of hope plucked then carefully
Placed in a small cup of water, 
An offering, 
Just like they did 
in Terezin?

---

Terezin was a holding camp, of sorts. A ghetto established by the Nazi’s, and for countless it was a last stop before transportation to extermination camps. Terezin contained scholars, scientists, artists, musicians and philosophers and was used as a model camp for propaganda to mollify the world and convince their allies that those being held were not being ill treated. Here are a few statistics from this ‘holding camp”-

• 33,456 died in Terezin

• 88,202 were transported to death camps

• of the 15,000 children who passed through Terezin to Auschwitz only 100 survived and none were under the age of fourteen

(Information gathered from Terezin.org and “…I Never Saw Another Butterfly…, Children’s drawings and Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp, 1942-1944)

Where is the line? Is there a line? In this ethno-centric, power obsessed regime which line will finally make us stand up? Suppression of media and information? What about its anti-intellectual, anti-science stance? When they have the power to define what “Christian” means—which they now do-will that be the line? What about when they start to come for the arts? Too late, that’s already arrived with the blatant takeover of the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. This has all happened before with the attempted eradication of an ethnic population, or wait, it is happening now too in an attempt to create a neo-Las Vegas in Gaza.

Where is the line? Where is your line? Where will that line be when they come for something you really care about?

P.S. To those of you who are still here-thank you. You really do find out who you can trust to hold your questions and your truth when you stop posting the light hearted ‘stuff’. I appreciate you. Be safe, be strong. S.