I wrote this poem three days after Sean Taylor's death. It is a statement of how incomprehensible loss can be and the indifferences one experiences in the wake of loss. I really am numbed by Sean Taylor’s death. It is true he was only a child. It is tragic. It is senseless. And as a Redskins fan, I am even, somewhat moved by the community expression. But in what direction is confusing to me as is the news. However, in contrast to the children we have sent to die in Iraq, I am so outraged. This country has broken apart and eaten the bones of my heart. It is nothing new, not even momentarily novel. The same applies for the parents that battered to death their child, and the man in Kensington who shot all three of his kids and then himself. What page was that on?
I read this poem a few days back to an audience. Some were appalled. A few nodded as if agreeing, and a few asked me questions I refused to answer. May be for that, I am a little sorry. It is probably why I write this now. Like this country, I have found I like to say shocking things but I don’t much like hearing them. Inasmuch, I will continue to sift for some clear expression, or truth, or maybe even escape from indifference. But that is my affair.
Sean Taylor is Dead, So is Saddam Hussein. George Bush is Not
What tired clichés, the unrusted corpse
the unready grave. But still he is
prematurely and forlornly, and he is
deemed, in his passing,
a more worthy,
esteemed person
of aesthetic significance.
I didn’t know so many
valued his part, took him so seriously,
with so many permutations,
the spitting silent gunslinger among middle field
foul mongers and ineloquent attitudes, “as if,”
blinking at the crowd
with hip rock-star condescension.
Or so it was the way
the Morse code of the press composed him.
Such was the image,
though it may be he was
just a rookie with a cause
nobody much cared for.
As they say in the bond market,
his craft, his purpose, was to prevent
success, to cause failure.
I do not suggest he was genius of any kind,
but I do think he was good
at what he did.
And the more I learn about anything
the more I respect that: being good;
skill, craft, savvy, knowledge of form.
After which comes passion, commitment.
A power to transcend the mortified page
of mutant sadness, over writing
the parents who beat their infant child to death,
eclipsing the sub-literate Idiot
of attention for every war crime
ever graffittied on walls in fields
of glorious gore.
That is art,
which resides in the tears of the beholder.
So, have I thrown a false note
or negative infective at his play?
An unwanted embryo hungry for oxygen?
An uncultured scamp and fraud
that both merit rage?
Can I hit so hard that flags fly and fall
begging a benediction
or, for fucking crying out loud,
comic interdiction,
mean or trill,
for some instant
replay expertly unencrypted?
If I dressed in pin or zebra stripes would I
find it? Shit, I don’t expect to. Not yet.
Maybe never, not now that Sean Taylor is dead.
Though I am only one of some
still questioning, at least I hope,
one of some bound to bear witness
to what lives on long
after the season has gone.
It’s a long bomb.
There. Did you catch that?
m.r. kidd
7 O' Clock News/Silent Night by Simon & Garfunkel
I read this poem a few days back to an audience. Some were appalled. A few nodded as if agreeing, and a few asked me questions I refused to answer. May be for that, I am a little sorry. It is probably why I write this now. Like this country, I have found I like to say shocking things but I don’t much like hearing them. Inasmuch, I will continue to sift for some clear expression, or truth, or maybe even escape from indifference. But that is my affair.
Sean Taylor is Dead, So is Saddam Hussein. George Bush is Not
What tired clichés, the unrusted corpse
the unready grave. But still he is
prematurely and forlornly, and he is
deemed, in his passing,
a more worthy,
esteemed person
of aesthetic significance.
I didn’t know so many
valued his part, took him so seriously,
with so many permutations,
the spitting silent gunslinger among middle field
foul mongers and ineloquent attitudes, “as if,”
blinking at the crowd
with hip rock-star condescension.
Or so it was the way
the Morse code of the press composed him.
Such was the image,
though it may be he was
just a rookie with a cause
nobody much cared for.
As they say in the bond market,
his craft, his purpose, was to prevent
success, to cause failure.
I do not suggest he was genius of any kind,
but I do think he was good
at what he did.
And the more I learn about anything
the more I respect that: being good;
skill, craft, savvy, knowledge of form.
After which comes passion, commitment.
A power to transcend the mortified page
of mutant sadness, over writing
the parents who beat their infant child to death,
eclipsing the sub-literate Idiot
of attention for every war crime
ever graffittied on walls in fields
of glorious gore.
That is art,
which resides in the tears of the beholder.
So, have I thrown a false note
or negative infective at his play?
An unwanted embryo hungry for oxygen?
An uncultured scamp and fraud
that both merit rage?
Can I hit so hard that flags fly and fall
begging a benediction
or, for fucking crying out loud,
comic interdiction,
mean or trill,
for some instant
replay expertly unencrypted?
If I dressed in pin or zebra stripes would I
find it? Shit, I don’t expect to. Not yet.
Maybe never, not now that Sean Taylor is dead.
Though I am only one of some
still questioning, at least I hope,
one of some bound to bear witness
to what lives on long
after the season has gone.
It’s a long bomb.
There. Did you catch that?
m.r. kidd
7 O' Clock News/Silent Night by Simon & Garfunkel
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