Social Question

cazzie's avatar

What do you think of this poem?

Asked by cazzie (24516points) September 11th, 2010

Changed World
By K**** K****
2004

Planning finally complete
They knew there would be no retreat—
Upon their knees final prayers were said
Meditation to bring focus
On the battle ahead.

Nerves of steel, steady and unshaken
No remorse for the lives that would be taken.
Fulfillment of destiny was seen in their eyes
And their ears would not hear the mourners’ cries.

An evil entity had to be cast down.
Ruling the world with imperial beliefs,
The sovereignty would have to abdicate its crown.
Blinded by arrogance that it could not crumble,
The giant empire would be humbled.

Far from the city a girl is stirred
By a ringing phone.
Mother calls and displays an alarming tone—
There has been a calamity,
A tragedy of epic proportions.
Into the towers two big birds flew.
No survivors, not even the crew.
It must have been an accident, nothing of malicious intent,
The mechanical system must have failed
Or the pilot missed his descent.

Preparing for work I shift into second gear
The tasks of the day filling my head,
A stop at the bank is nothing to dread.
Jumping into the car with great surprise to my ear,
No songs from the speakers,
No tune or rhythm I hear.

The desperate tone of the announcer’s voice gave first clue.
More planes in the sky, with great menace they flew.
Rationale of premeditation would soon unfold—
Who on earth could be so bold?

We saw the unity of a nation in red, white and blue.
Never would the words “home of the brave” ring so true.
An attack on our empire could not keep us down,
From such atrocities we would rebound.
As we rebuilt, the psychological wounds ran deep
Enabling the perception of a vicarious enemy
Lying in every shadow just waiting to leap.

We turned our cautious eyes to suspicious men,
Security systems were raised
so a catastrophe could not happen again.
Insecurity swept across the land
Instilled by the wrath of Al-Queda’s hand.
Our sense of safety is forever gone,
But the tenacity of our great nation
will forge a new dawn.

Observing members: 0 Composing members: 0

9 Answers

ducky_dnl's avatar

That was AWESOME! :D

john65pennington's avatar

Fantastic poem. can this be translated into Muslem and a copy sent to each individual?

Zaku's avatar

Ugh. I think it repeats, dramatizes, and makes lyrical unfortunate cliches and pretenses from our media’s reaction to the Bush years, in a confrontational, righteous way, which all turns my stomach a bit and makes me dread having to deal with people’s mental programming about this bullshit into the future.

cazzie's avatar

@john65pennington I’m afraid it can’t be translated into ‘Muslem’ because that is not a language.

DrasticDreamer's avatar

I completely agree with @Zaku. It’s predictable, extremely typical, and saturated with overly patriotic prose – and unfortunately, I think this kind of poem only breeds intolerance.

Simone_De_Beauvoir's avatar

@john65pennington Aww, that’s great – maybe you can hand deliver it to the Muslims who lost loved ones in 9/11 facepalm

Simone_De_Beauvoir's avatar

The poem doesn’t flow for me – just recounts the events of the day as perceived by the author and it doesn’t move me in any way, whatsoever.

Jeruba's avatar

By my standards this is not poetry, however expressive it may be of a person’s private feelings.

The ending does meet my criterion for a well-mixed metaphor, which is that if you’re going to do it, there have to be at least three of them:

“Tenacity” invokes a metaphor of gripping or grasping and holding on tight.
“Forge” invokes a metaphor of metalwork, involving heating and hammering metal in order to shape it.
“Dawn” invokes a metaphor of the cycle of a day.

So by gripping or hanging onto something tightly, we are going to beat a daybreak out of metal.

What does this mean?

I truly don’t mean to be unkind, but to qualify as poetry something must be written with more thought and more care to the language than this.

cazzie's avatar

Don’t worry… it’s not mine.. hahaha… I didn’t think much of this poem either and was wondering why a certain university teacher praised it over several others that I thought were better. Thanks for confirming my opinion.

Answer this question

Login

or

Join

to answer.
Your answer will be saved while you login or join.

Have a question? Ask Fluther!

What do you know more about?
or
Knowledge Networking @ Fluther