[Newspoetry] Suicide Cults

[DL Emerick]

Suicide cults have a way
of dying, auto-extinction.

History shows us examples.

Masada where 960 Jews died,
though they didn't plan it,
as the purpose of their aim,
their plan to resist Romans
and their fatal imperialism,
fatal to Jewish way of life.
"Masada shall not fall again"
say soldiers, pledging faith.

And Jonestown came to its end,
when conquest of a kind came
and threatened to alter all
they deemed to be sacred,
they deemed to be most holy.
following their feared leader,
they died in a mass suicide,
for all life empties itself
when it lacks its possibility,
the pursuit of its happiness.

It is only the possibility,
of happiness, however defined,
keeping man happy in pursuit,
however vain and ridiculous,
however improbable its truth,
as long as it is out there,
as a dream that has a chance,
however remote and unlikely.

Suicide cults die out, failed,
from their very first inception,
for true believers would die,
and leave no one to follow.

It is strange, then, suicide,
as a political act, to die,
as the arabic car-bombers do,
aiming to free their country
though not living to be free.

One thinks of Japanese suicides,
ones who stabbed their hearts
when their honor was destroyed,
or ones who dive-bombed planes.

Even self-executed Socrates
died as a political example,
obedient to the laws of State.

But, still, this is not Camus,
these are all choices of life,
to die for a personal reason
as for a political reason,
seems to care for life best,
knowing when it is best to die,
rather than give up its meaning
and live, knowing one's lost self,
what it is to be living a slave,
unable to know happiness freely.