On Reading About the Shooting at the Holocaust Museum

When we can not understand, we can remember.

I am more than that name
chiseled on the wall of memory.

Those are just letters, they can not replace

a single face, or erase that resounding fall. 

They can not speak of the hidden fractures

and afflictions beneath its cold stone skin.

 

If you reach out and touch

your warm palm to that dead surface,

trace me with your fingers,

maybe lean in, you'll hear the cries

of a million empty voices,

open your eyes, you see me

and know me as you.

 

As we all face forward, shots shake

the stone behind sending up grit

that sticks in teeth and hair.  We fall as one body.

I lay very still as I hear the officers' call,

their hate sweeping out of them in waves

that wash over us.  In the ash and dirt,

not a sound from the shattered lungs of breathing,

red blankets pouring out of hearts that once beat

in that deep dark night.  Like thunder,

rattles the prison gates, enclosed in this

vile venom that seeps into bones and muscle.

I do not dare.  Hope.  Cry out.  Seal my fate.

 

A world gone black and I wait, I only wait,

until the earth is silent and cold

and I am buried away into that fear.

Until I am only one more name on a wall,

one more lost soul in history's never-ending war.

 

Author's Note

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/12/nation/na-holocaust-shooting12

Published in The Other Herald, October 2010

Reviews

[Norma M Sutton]

I like this. Especially the final two lines.

[Geralyn Miller]

Such emotional power, wonderful work; the intensity provided by your technique of hearkening back to the Holocaust is stunning.
Let all of us of every belief pray the hatred ends before the world does.

[ICE]

You are an amazing writer! The way this piece flowed! It was effortless. This piece made me feel so many things and I just wanted to thank you for sharing this.

~ICE