Monday, May 4, 2009

Kent State



In memory of four students who, exercising their freedom of speech, were shot dead thirty nine years ago today by agents of their own government.

When the Tiananmen Square event happened in 1989 our politicians and statesmen expressed a great amount of outrage. I was thinking: Isn't the pot calling the kettle black?

I love my country. I've hated a number of my country's leaders.

1 comment:

  1. I was not at Tiananmen Square in 1989; that was brewing as early as late 1986 actually, when I was there in Beijing. We marched for ten miles in a temperature of 10 F to different universities. And then we were all sent to remote places (to get familarized with "the unique national conditions" which means "not fit for the Western mode of governance"). 1986-87 student movement culminated in 1989 after a suppressed year.

    BTW, one from my poem sequence about the parallel incidents at the time of Viet War and Chinese Cultural Revolution:

        XVIII
    1970. The winter comes earlier than it should
    Her main vocal is still in coma, cocaine overdosed
    No longer can he set her blood and body into hot fly
    No longer, no longer. She is a little sad, she cannot help
    The mire of Vietnam sucks up too much of their vim
    Four are shot in Kent State U., two in Jackson
    Janis curses Jimi: “Goddamn it! He beat me to it!”
    There is no instant karma, no bridge over troubled water
    A scarring-over heart should shunt from bleeding ones
    “Let It Bleed!” “Let It Be!”

    It is easy to come when turning on Zeppelin loud
    Too easy, too easy and she no longer feels the excitement
    A deflating balloon holds on to the inflated emptiness
    Is my small step to orgasm also a giant leap for mankind?

    ReplyDelete