Today I thought it would be poignant to read some poems that have been inspired and driven by attacks on so many innocents around the world. Many of these have been written by amateur poets, including the one I am covering today. This means that the poetry is not swayed by the fact that it has to be published and has to sell; it is a very personal account. This one is in particular as the writer says they had a dream about an attacker and so wished to write from their point of view.
It is called 'Purification'
I soar the skies in a state of euphoria,
My lengthy hair fluttering in the gusts,
Lashing out at my heels as I plummet:
An architectural wonder anticipates my arrival.
I shatter the gleaming stained glass windows:
Faux renditions of a woman holding a child
(Rings around their heads: colourless glass).
A grin smears across my blood-covered face
And the light of a thousand candles gleams in my eyes…
Velvet draperies fall to the dirty floor;
Screams arise from the shouting priests as I
Drop down behind them and
Slit their unholy throats with my encrusted sword.
Groans of pain and tearing of flesh resounds
Beneath the echoes of the bullets as they fly
With thunderously wondrous abandon from my
UZI.
Merrily I laugh at the elated passion that
Surges through my veins like a prairie fire.
My mind calms and with pride I wade
Through my personal lake of blood, tears, and terror,
Blotting out the flames of the meaningless candles.
My teeth glimmer midst my ecstatic smile as I crush
With the tread of my shoe the remnants of countless crucifixes.
One more pointless conclave of lies annihilated.
As the whole world wonders how one human being could act so against another, this poem aims to encapsulate part of the thought processes that a terrorist might experience. Before I go further I would like to make clear that I will by no means cover all views on terrorism and do not aim to cause offence. I merely wish to show how poetry can help us consider and ponder the events that are happening around us. It is such a sensitive, difficult topic to handle and even my own views are not solid, so I will try to come across as unbiased on the matter, for who knows, some of the terrorists themselves could be seen as victims in their own right.
The poet has done well to show rather than tell where we are in the poem; we begin in the 'skies' headed for 'an architectural wonder', producing echoes of the Twin Towers attack. however, the 'stained' glass windows broaden the picture to any Christian church, a specific attack on religion, labelled as a 'conclave of lies'. The use of the present tense helps the reader gain the sense of immediacy and makes the 'euphoria' more tangible as we go through action by action with the narrator, seeing and feeling all that they do. The only past tense used is in the last line, when their task is done and the people, removed from the narrator's guilty mind by using the metonymy of 'conclave' to remove their humanity, are 'annihilated'. No back-story to the terrorist is given, we only know their present task and feelings, which perhaps highlights the problem that we are not reaching these people sooner and preventing conversion.
The verbs used are dynamic and violent, even where you wouldn't expect it, as with the hair 'lashing' and the grin as it 'smears'. This makes the poem rather sadistic, representing the twisted nature of terrorist preaching. Even the narrator's 'passion' is destructive, as it is likened in a simile to 'fire'. The glory of success is conveyed through the use of the adjective 'personal', which is ironic as terrorists remove their identity and also treat others in the same way, as if we are all the same, or should all be.
have you ever done something that you know you shouldn't have but enjoyed doing it for that very reason? In the eyes of a terrorist this is the same feeling, just multiplied, and I suppose they take this feeling as one given by god. if you are told that that is what it is and you are not given another option then you are going to believe this is true. You have to have human sympathy for these people, as with any child who is part of a religion purely because their parents were, because they are not given their individual choice but their whole life begins and grows around the one concept your parents have convinced you of, so by the time someone tries to argue differently, it is too late for you to give up such a great part of your life. just food for thought, these people are fundamentally no different from all others.
It is called 'Purification'
I soar the skies in a state of euphoria,
My lengthy hair fluttering in the gusts,
Lashing out at my heels as I plummet:
An architectural wonder anticipates my arrival.
I shatter the gleaming stained glass windows:
Faux renditions of a woman holding a child
(Rings around their heads: colourless glass).
A grin smears across my blood-covered face
And the light of a thousand candles gleams in my eyes…
Velvet draperies fall to the dirty floor;
Screams arise from the shouting priests as I
Drop down behind them and
Slit their unholy throats with my encrusted sword.
Groans of pain and tearing of flesh resounds
Beneath the echoes of the bullets as they fly
With thunderously wondrous abandon from my
UZI.
Merrily I laugh at the elated passion that
Surges through my veins like a prairie fire.
My mind calms and with pride I wade
Through my personal lake of blood, tears, and terror,
Blotting out the flames of the meaningless candles.
My teeth glimmer midst my ecstatic smile as I crush
With the tread of my shoe the remnants of countless crucifixes.
One more pointless conclave of lies annihilated.
As the whole world wonders how one human being could act so against another, this poem aims to encapsulate part of the thought processes that a terrorist might experience. Before I go further I would like to make clear that I will by no means cover all views on terrorism and do not aim to cause offence. I merely wish to show how poetry can help us consider and ponder the events that are happening around us. It is such a sensitive, difficult topic to handle and even my own views are not solid, so I will try to come across as unbiased on the matter, for who knows, some of the terrorists themselves could be seen as victims in their own right.
The poet has done well to show rather than tell where we are in the poem; we begin in the 'skies' headed for 'an architectural wonder', producing echoes of the Twin Towers attack. however, the 'stained' glass windows broaden the picture to any Christian church, a specific attack on religion, labelled as a 'conclave of lies'. The use of the present tense helps the reader gain the sense of immediacy and makes the 'euphoria' more tangible as we go through action by action with the narrator, seeing and feeling all that they do. The only past tense used is in the last line, when their task is done and the people, removed from the narrator's guilty mind by using the metonymy of 'conclave' to remove their humanity, are 'annihilated'. No back-story to the terrorist is given, we only know their present task and feelings, which perhaps highlights the problem that we are not reaching these people sooner and preventing conversion.
The verbs used are dynamic and violent, even where you wouldn't expect it, as with the hair 'lashing' and the grin as it 'smears'. This makes the poem rather sadistic, representing the twisted nature of terrorist preaching. Even the narrator's 'passion' is destructive, as it is likened in a simile to 'fire'. The glory of success is conveyed through the use of the adjective 'personal', which is ironic as terrorists remove their identity and also treat others in the same way, as if we are all the same, or should all be.
have you ever done something that you know you shouldn't have but enjoyed doing it for that very reason? In the eyes of a terrorist this is the same feeling, just multiplied, and I suppose they take this feeling as one given by god. if you are told that that is what it is and you are not given another option then you are going to believe this is true. You have to have human sympathy for these people, as with any child who is part of a religion purely because their parents were, because they are not given their individual choice but their whole life begins and grows around the one concept your parents have convinced you of, so by the time someone tries to argue differently, it is too late for you to give up such a great part of your life. just food for thought, these people are fundamentally no different from all others.
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