[Newspoetry] Little Lily hopes for no more attacks

[Donald L Emerick]

Dear Little Lily,

Your poetic venture is interesting, as far as its writing goes, which would
be how it sounds to the ear, as to how it echoes there, for if the ear can
not hear the song, at some point, perhaps after many considerations have
passed into mindless oblivion, then there may have been no song there -- but
one hopes not to have to wait so long, perhaps longer than ink and paper
(old style; new style, file format, processor and computer model?) will
last.  One does not, in any event, have to wait to find your song, Little
Lily -- which (fortunately or not) can not always be said of mine, for I
sometimes sing and sometimes do not, and sometimes I forget which it is that
I am doing, because I become most interested in the things that I have to
say, that I forget how it is that I am saying them.  And, when I forget how
it is that I speak, then I may say things too intensely, too intently,
saying more than I really meant to say, in ways that are not pleasing to the
ear, or to the heart.

Well, despite that prologue of praise, I also have no praise for one kind of
sentiment that I find in your newspoem, and that sentiment I would explore
with you.  Namely, your thinking in the poem seems to direct the problems of
the FEAR that you, Little Lily, apprehend toward the Al-Qaida, (or towards
those Palestinians who have like suicidal practices) because they have
chosen to wage the only kind of war that they thought possible.  You find
this FEAR disruptive and distressing -- and well you might, for no one wants
to face yet another way that life could be abruptly ended.

Yet, I do FEAR death by automobile accident due to bad auto designs, poorly
maintained and inadequately regulated highways, incompetent drivers, and a
thousand other defects of the automotive way of life.  The fact that 50,000
or so of my fellow citizens will die, just like that, because of that
automotive system does not inspire in me any FEAR at all.  Just caution.

I could go on through the litany of other possible deaths that I (and those
that I love) face every day -- all of them far greater risks because they
are ever present dangers.  Caution becomes a way of life, when one lives in
a world made ever more dangerous, not because it is inhabited by others, but
that they have become convinced that their own hasty ways will get them
ahead of the ever quickening headlong rush of humanity toward the end of
time.  This rush towards the end of time, impelled by the idea of being
first, of being top-dog, of being wealthy or famous, and so on, thus wishes
the erasure of all locality in the sense of those barriers and defenses
against movement.

I could call this my own caution (if not quite FEAR) against globalization,
against nationalization, against commercialization, which is not at all
xenophobic nor anti-technologic nor any other negative.  My caution is
concern that haste makes waste of consent and its due processes, which have
both the advantage and the disadvantage of requiring time for thinking, for
talking, for doing nothing except being aware that power ought to be a
matter of equality, between equals, and not a matter of aggregation, between
unequals.

So, what I do FEAR in your poem?  Well, I fear that you have chosen to blame
the Al-Qaida for your own FEAR.  Having said that, let me stress that I do
not approve the use of violence by anyone, for any reason, for there could
never be any reason to violence that has validity, except for the cruelty
inherent in acting out the evil desire to rule the other out of the order of
time, by dismissing them from the process of consent.

I blame Al-Qaida for its weakness which leads them to sin, by their acts of
violence.  I also may blame the United States government, for fostering and
perpetuating the largest machinery of violence in the history of the
world -- and also larger than all other machinery of violence in the rest of
the world, even if it could be put together again (like Humpty Dumpty).
But, I mostly blame myself for all of this violence, for (wrongly) thinking
that I could, by some decisive act, end violence.  However, only indecisive
acts -- acts that refuse to act like tough-guy, mean-guy Bush -- could
possibly end violence.  An indecisive act is political, in that it seeks the
unanimous consent of others -- thus posing an impossibility for grandeur and
conquest to overcome, I should hope.

As for spoiled "holidays", which would be worse: to lead a spoiled life or
have a spoiled holiday?  What if your choice is to despoil others of life so
that you can enjoy the spoils of war?  So, yes, there is something about the
fact of being spoiled that seems to need discussion here, but it might not
be the loss of the "freedom" the way that you think that it might be.
Perhaps, you Americans have purchased your freedom at too high a price that
is paid in the blood of others -- by marginalizing others who are not
American patriots, but American victims.

These martyred victims would be those fall to the violence of American (and
"capitalist") economic rapaciousness, which erroneously thinks that it can
discount all the rest of time back to the value set in some present market
place, as if market places themselves were forever the same.  As St. Marx
tried to say, perhaps, there is inherent value, and then there this is this
false sense of value, that comes from the prices of the current  market
place.  Like St. Marx, I despise the deadly mortal sin of corporate
capitalism, for I love the noble dream of free enterprise -- which, above
all else, impossibly requires true equality in every sense of the term.

So, tell Little Lily that her worries reflect her misshapen values.  She is
worrying about rocks falling on her head because someone like America cut
all the trees off the mountain top, letting the boulders break free and
threaten to roll down upon Little Lily's head.  Now, Little Lily should
fear, properly, the madmen in their bulldozers, who plow the tops of
mountains which will slide down upon us, far more than she should fear the
boulder itself.  So, Little Lily should grow up, to face the accidental for
what it is and fear the causal harms against which she yet has time to
intervene.

Well, perhaps, I have been too caustic and cryptic in my comments on the
thematics of your poem, but I speak when the melodious words sound
unsoundly, discordantly in the mind of reason and disharmonically in the
heart of belief.  And, thus, I have sung my own counter-poem, imperfectly,
sans sense of pitch and rhythm.

Thanks for listening,
Donald L Emerick