Joe Lehman Quagmire pt. 1 12/3/02

Joe Lehman

Quagmire pt. 1 12/3/02









He held tight to the gun.

Clutching it for dear life, he crouched in the shadows.

His body tensing, ready to jump at any pin drop, trigger finger itching to unload the rapid magazine burst of a worker’s fury.

This must be what guerrilla warfare is really like, he thought.

The room was blanketed in the cold, shivering darkness.

It was as though the window had no effect at all, the bright light and cool brisk mountain air did not exist once it reached the doors and windows of the cabin.

He kept deathly still. Under cover of darkness, his senses trained to enhancement five times beyond what they once were.

His body, a quivering piece of jelly, he had always taken such pride in proper care for it. Now it was garbage, his bones brittle, his skin a pasty malnourished yellow, longing for a taste of the rejuvenating sunlight it missed so much.

His eyes were an empty pool of blackness, like he had not had a moment of refreshing sleep in weeks.

His stubble growing ragged like an unkempt hermit, and his hair, where it was once a wave of sandy blond, now a greasy mound of slime and dirt.

He was now dead to every form of emotion.

Only vengeance remained the force left driving him to stay alive.

It was the vengeance of a brother, torn from his flesh by the murdering arm of law enforcement.

His last resolve was to strike back, cast a dagger into the heart of the great oppressor.

Slowly he was deteriorating to waste they had all wanted him to be.

Now they had gotten their wish.

Hounded, beaten like an animal, he could only hide for such a long time.

Lost in a jungle of voices, the whole world playing in his head like a clock radio that could not be unplugged.

While his body was frozen, in his mind he was on the ground on all fours scavenging for bits of broken pieces with numbing desperation.

The pathetic whimpering expected of a dog, reducing to a worthless derelict piece of human refuse.
But that’s what’s expected now.

This was what he had always wanted.

He was finally underground.

Suddenly the silence was broken.

The creaking, tapping sound emanating from outside the doorway unearthed him, but did not shake him from his position.
Slowly, he braced himself.

Pursing his lips, clenching his teeth, his body tensed even more.
The fury was pulsating his breath.

Ready to aim high and squeeze the trigger with all his might.
Then a he heard a whisper.

He’d recognize it anywhere; the sweet maiden seventeen-year-old voice that had soothed him for so long on the days when it seemed like it was all worth nothing. That nothing he worked for ever mattered.

That voice was calling out his name.

But he did not relax.

His hands clutched the weapon even tighter. His body tensed further, but his breathing was at a greater trembling than he had ever experienced.

Slowly, the door opened; a creak, then some more.

He didn’t move. He couldn’t move a muscle.

He saw her enter the room slowly; everything was a blur, like it wasn’t real.

She moved closer and closer to him, and he couldn’t move.

His face remained the same hopeless, drooling figure with the dark, empty stare, it was.

As she came closer through the shadows, that voice called out his name again.

She was carrying something in her arms. He could not see it, for he was looking straight ahead without eye contact.

He thought he heard her say, it’s me, I’m here.

Was right there before him now, and he still looked straight ahead.

She could barely muster the words. He could barely make out any of what she was saying.

He heard her say you can’t go on like this.

Nothing could get through. His face was still a paragon of hopelessness.

A spot of drool built up at his lips. She brought out a handkerchief with her free hand and dabbed at his face. His face didn’t change. He was comatose. Nothing could get through.

Tears were streaming down her face, now they were beginning to stream down his.

She held up the bundle in her hand.

Wrapped in a blanket he could hear a cooing sound, a gurgle, and then a tiny voice. Unwittingly his eyes darted toward the bundle for a second.

It was there he saw the little round face, the eyes wandering around the room and up at him, with the innocent curiosity only a newborn would possess. The little thing looked as though it was wondering where it was.

He could smell the clean aroma of its soft white skin, the kind of cleanliness only a newborn has when it is still impervious to the evils of the world around it.

He heard her say this is your daughter.

Everything that happened next happened without him even realizing it.

For the first time, his lip curled up the way it would when he would normally smile.

He heard himself muster a sound lodged in his throat, a weak, infantile grunt.

You see, she has your eyes, heard her tell him.

He looked up at her with an imploring stare. His eyes like those of a child to helpless to care for itself, begging to be fed.

His arm weakly extended toward her.

The next thing he knew, he had dropped the gun.

Nervously she placed the baby in his arm.

He gently held the child close to his heart with what little strength he had.

The tears were still few, but were beginning to stream down.

He held the child tight and the cold world opened up like the blossoming of a flower.

At last something in there melted.

I will flesh out my critique of W.H. Auden's classic poem in the near future. I intend to tie it to the subject matter of my posts preceding it and to various current events I am monitering. Unfortunately, due to the limitations my present mental state has laid upon me, I have not the energy to do so at this very moment. The critique, thus far, is short and contributes no new ideas. Please bear with me, it is my goal to offer material that is more to the best of my abilities. I am frustrated and ashamed that I have been impaired.

Featured Poem:

Musee des Beaux Arts
by W.H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.



If there is one poem that conveys the message of W.H. Auden’s passion for oppressed people absolutely clearly and without any distortion, it is probably Musée des Beaux Arts. Unlike a Spain 1937, or even a September 1, 1939, with their lengthy facility with words, Musée succeeds simply in its succinctness. The poem’s brevity, its ability to come to its point in just a few short allusions leave the reader with a searing indictment of what Auden sees as man’s indifference to the suffering of his fellow man. From the opening line there is little chance the reader should be confused about where Auden is leading. He does not, to use a cliched term, “beat around the bush.”

Auden initially sets the poem from the point of few of the gods, most likely those of Ancient Greece and Rome. This is evidenced in the quotes, “about suffering they [italics mine] were never wrong,” and, “the Old Masters: how well they understood its human position; how it takes place while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.” The “Old Masters” implies gods of old. There is hardly a tale involving classic gods that does not tell of acts of foolishness on the part of mortals in comparison to the gods’ all-knowing judgement. Auden does not expect that human beings should have the maturity to recognize their fellows’ suffering and raise a hand in assistance. He leaves expectations of understanding to the gods. Gods understood suffering, its “human position,”—i.e., the randomness of its occurrence.

To give an example of randomness of suffering, Auden presents a situation with the potential for bringing about suffering: children skating on a frozen pond, where they might fall through the ice. Swiftness and lack of warning are signs of great tragedy in literature. The best and most frightening stories begin with scenes of innocence only to be suddenly interrupted by tragedy. For tragedy to strike a character in the act of recreation is to catch the reader off guard. The image of children at play over a frozen pond works to this effect. The use of children as victims taps into the readers’ emotional vein.

Auden’s strategy is to induce the reader into identifying with the ignorant humans he addresses. Their fault and the reader’s fault are one and the same. He means to play to the readers’ guilt for having allowed the tragedy to occur. He reminds the readers of how their comfortable bourgeois lives will go on long after their fellow man is befallen by tragedy. Hence, “anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse scratches its innocent behind on a tree.” The reference to the simple routines of animals and their bodily functions is meant to represent people’s trivial pursuits in their everyday existence. Like the dog living its “doggy life” and the horse scratching its behind on a tree, human beings live off the fat of the land without contribution.

The strong point of the poem that is the most inspired of Auden is his use of the Brueghel painting The Fall of Icarus. Icarus is in essence, the visual counterpart to Musée’s subjective association. As Auden describes it, the painting depicts the people’s inaction as Icarus is plummeting down to earth. The world is apathetic to Icarus’s plight. Auden is wise to draw the connection to Brueghel’s painting. It is as if both Auden and Brueghel are illustrating the same message. Indeed, the poem is a tribute to Brueghel, as it is revealed in the footnotes that Icarus is located in the museum of the poem’s title, the Musée des Beaux Arts.

It is the irony of this poem that Auden is trying to reach his readers with an appeal to their emotions and their sense of guilt and compassion in order to preach the point to them that he believes they have no sense of compassion. He is essentially counting on their lack of apathy in order to get their attention and tell them they are apathetic. This is not a flaw in the poem; rather it can be viewed positively. The poem becomes a call for reforming the human character.

This copy of my posted Yahoo question best explains my seven-month abscence

jhandler...
Your Open Question
Show me another »
Why haven't I been able to access my imagination since my severe bout of depression seven months ago?
For many years now I have been on prozac, depakote, and aderall. I made the fateful choice of attempting to wean off the meds seven months ago. Following a severe bout of depression I resumed the meds. But since then I feel as though my mind has deflated. I can barely access my imagination, my ability for critical thinking, my immediate memory, and my ability to concentrate enough to read. My emotions have also changed. I am consistently more apathetic and laid-back about things. I cannot attain feelings of love, devotion and desire. My long-dulled sex drive is now all but nonexistent. It is like my entire brain chemistry has altered. I can almost feel the decrease in electricity flowing. What has happened??? Is this evidence of permanent damage?! I m dying for answers. I would appreciate some sort of educated guesses here. Thank you.
1 hour ago

Out of respect for the privacy of the Yahoo users who have been kind enough to provide me with answers, I am not including them here.

So Many Coincidences

So many coincidences,
How we treat the children today,
The pornography of our war.

At home we just drain their health care*,
Abroad we just blow off their limbs,
So many coincidences.

A Twelve-year-old boy took the stand,
Poor Graeme Frost; they dragged him through dirt,
The pornography of our war.

For what crime did he deserve this?
For living victims, children are,
So many coincidences.

The Iraqi boy lies wounded,
Poor nameless child, his head is gashed,
The pornography of our war.

They can’t face the casualties,
So they relish attacking them,
The pornography of our war,
So many coincidences.

Joe Lehman 10/18/07


*Health deal sought after veto upheld

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent 18 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The Democratic-controlled House failed on Thursday to override President Bush's veto of a politically popular children's health bill, and the White House instantly called for compromise talks on a replacement.

Continued…

"Children do die--Especially in times of war and revolution."

…This is one poet's quote.


I'm amazed at how he too has understood the symbolic meaning of Victor Hugo's Gavroche.
For the quote was in this context:

"I finally read the novel and
Hugo's words were so vivid
His characters, including Gavroche,
Still live in my mind."

It is of true comfort to me that someone else understands.

Robert Fisk reported this from Baghdad in April 2003:

"I watched two-and-a-half-year-old Ali Najour lying in agony on the bed, his clothes soaked with blood, a tube through his nose, until a relative walked up to me.'I want to talk to you,' he shouted, his voice rising in fury. 'Why do you British want to kill this little boy? Why do you even want to look at him? You did this – you did it!'"


"On television, it looks so clean. On Sunday evening, the BBC showed burning civilian cars, its reporter – 'embedded' with US forces – saying that he saw some of their passengers lying dead beside them.

That was all. No pictures of the charred corpses, no close-ups of the shrivelled children. So perhaps I should warn those of what the BBC once called a nervous disposition to go no further. But if they want to know what America and Britain are doing to the innocent of Baghdad, they should read on."



I submit a quote of my own:

In war and revolution, every child is Gavroche. In Iraq, every child is Gavroche.

Blues

The music never stops.
It tugs at the strings.
My memories and sentiments
Are just useless things.

I hear Buddy's and Ritchie’s voices
Crying out in their pain.
The soulless vultures who’d exploit them
Are now all raisin’ Cain.

My old true niche
Still lies with the classic rock.
You can bend me at the same point,
That somber Sleepwalk.

On "For Frank Snyder"

I wrote the villanelle below roughly a year ago. While its subject matter contains historical events that I have been passionate about, it is not a great poem. At least in my opinion. Its conception was well thought out, but its birth was too hasty. I intend to post revisions in the future.

For Frank Snyder [1] (Little Great Soul)

Where was it that the revolution first sounded the child’s death knell?
Was it outside the tent when the little bullet struck your small head?
For Frank Snyder, little lost one. They cradled you till fire spread well

Or was it with the cries of children [2] at the Indian schools’ hell?
For perverted pleasures, their bodies ravaged in chicken hawks’ beds
Where was it that the revolution first sounded the child’s death knell?

Perhaps when they stomped to death baby Life Africa [3], you know well?
They claimed he never existed after they cracked his tiny head
For Frank Snyder, little lost one. They cradled you till fire spread well

Like Hugo’s Gavroche [4] singing defiantly, to bullets he fell
Just as in that novel a boy’s sad short life was ended with lead
Where was it that the revolution first sounded the child’s death knell?

Or maybe it was the child’s death knell sounding revolution’s bell
With the innocents’ slaughter, the call for revolution does spread
For Frank Snyder, little lost one. They cradled you till fire spread well

Gavroche, Hugo called Little Great Soul. Said that he had flown, not fell
Cries, from fires in West Philly [5] or Ludlow [6], back to you they have lead
Where was it that the revolution first sounded the child’s death knell?
For Frank Snyder, little lost one. They cradled you till fire spread well

1. Frank Snyder was an Eleven-year-old son of one of the striking coal miners that camped out with their families at tent colony at Ludlow, Colorado in 1914. Young Frank was the first fatality during the armed assault by state militiamen.

2. This is in reference to the numerous accounts of rampant physical, mental, and sexual abuse of Native American children at the residential schools they were forcibly relocated to in the United States and Canada. This practice of removal and relocation continued up until the late twentieth century.

3. Life Africa was the three-week-old baby son of Janine Africa, a member of the Philadelphia-based Black Nationalist MOVE Organization. In 1976 Life was stomped to death by a police officer as his mother tried to shield him in her arms. The police and the city have challenged the charges of this atrocity, denying Life’s very existence due to the fact that the infant was born without a birth certificate.

4. Gavroche is a child character in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. Near the story’s climax the brave boy rebel is gunned down by French troops at the barricade as he sings. Hugo writes, “the little great soul had flown.”

5. In 1985 six adults and five children were incinerated when a firebomb was dropped from a police helicopter on the MOVE townhouse. This occurred during an assault by heavily armed Philadelphia police and federal agents. An entire city block was destroyed.

6. The most infamous act of moment of the months-long Ludlow massacre was when militiamen ignited a fire in a cellar beneath the tent colony incinerating eleven children. Several were also shot to death.

It's been a long time. For a great many reasons that I will clarify soon I have been out of commission since March. I have yet to figure out the way to paste the above photograph of myself into my profile. For the time being I will continue to open future posts with this image.