Refugee from Hell
April 13, 2010
This is my first attempt at a speech for the Traitor and to try to understand why someone would betray a perfect world.
TRAITOR: I’ve seen the flesh. Ash-dusted broken bodies
the ash from flesh, itself ruined peoples
condemned to hell of which no poet dreamt
and sentencing in turn in usury
of soul and pain and endless cyclic wrongs
born on us in blood and to blood return
returning as I must to place of birth.
The sights of my life. The sights of my life.
Average condition of a place that’s hell
to you, and to me home. I saw no deaths
was witness to no catastrophe
I never stood inside a uniform
or against one. Wasn’t sent to the wars
didn’t slave in the factories or fields
but I cannot describe the condition
of my life, actions, or consequences
of all the choices that we make in hell.
You can’t fresh perceive, without example
see even the most average crucified
upon a web of wrongs. Or you would see
only the web, you would miss the spider.
Stare. Stare at my world for hundreds of years
see only actions, the daily cruelties
holocausts casually wrought, slow murders
by despair, by starvation, poverty
and even death by comfort for the rich.
You cannot know what it is to live there.
In a world where each choice pulls on a string
of finance, faith or invisible cause
connects you to another, and again
to another, and again and again
tightening the wire round a strangers heart
and even stillness, silence, is a crime
where everything attained is sacrifice.
SPEAK: Of all the ones.
TRAITOR: Sorry.
SPEAK: Of all the ones.
you speak of this to me?
TRAITOR: I should have known,
realised.
SPEAK - To Me?
TRAITOR: Of all of us, you ..
SPEAK – To me? To me? And how many have I killed?
