One of His... One of Mine

Apparently I can write endlessly in this box, but not in the word document containing my Hebrew Scriptures paper. Maybe I should just write my paper on this blog? Each day can be a bullet point on my outline. (I have a wonderful outline, why can't I just stick to it!) Hmph.

How do I begin this story? I have a literature anthology textbook that my Dad's ex-wife used when she was at UMKC. He found it when we were finishing the basement and gave it to me. (It still has some of her old assignments and notes in it. One of which is a doodle my Dad made.) Anyway, it breaks up literature into different categories: Innocence and Experience, Conformity and Rebellion, Love and Hate, and The Presence of Death. And for some odd reason, I'm drawn to the works in the last one.

I'm half tempted to post dozens of the poems on here. However, I'll just post this one by Wilfred Owen (about WWI)

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering chocking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
pro patria mori.

-----

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori- "It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country" -Horace

I keep hearing Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty, or give me death!" or Nathan Hale's "I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country." How salty such quotes become weighed against that poem. (Not that I'm against patriotism, but it was a nice counterbalance to my overgrown romanticism.) So after reading dozens of morbid, wonderful poems I felt inspired to write a poem of my own. Now, let me reassure you that it is not profound or wise. It's more of a reaction: my own form of applause.

-----

What can I say of death?

I ask with lines of dark poetry
still stuck in my eyes.

Here is positive knowledge:
People allege to taste death,
they bargain, they make careers on it, they twist
metaphors and cook proverbs
They accept it, reject it, embrace it
or proudly wear it as their personality

Yet, has anyone truly
perceived their own
inevitable
death?

Has anyone truly perceived
their own
inevitable
life?

Perhaps the latter is shallow
enough for children to swim in
However, sometimes I wonder
if the answer to the two
are very very
similar.