it burns.

it burns.
no more dreams
crush crush
crushed
no more laughs
laugh laugh
laughter
all just going
going going
gone
no more songs
sing sing
sang
no more peace
fight fight
fighting
no more life
lie lie
truth
cold cold
ice
burn burn
burns
skin skin
skin
die die
dead

Carry On

Staring
blankly
down.
Unmoving,
Unhurting
yet inside
dying,
dying,
dying,
dead.
Death
eerily
silent
A shake,
a question,
a hug,
a sigh. It's
Nothing
in the end.
Still staring,
yet now-
dying,
dying,
dying,
dead.
It's gone.
Forgotten.
Carry on.

A Short Note

A short note/analysis about the poem above: it's another poem about Night, and I've been looking around for it a while because I lost it, but I found it again! Anyway, it's a response to the Holocaust. The main lesson is that after depressing and horrifying events, people just have to move on sometimes. It's tragic, but true.
So, carry on, my friend.
Carry on and look past the death.
Hope that works out for you.
It didn't for me.

No, I will never forget.

The Holocaust and 9/11

After finishing Night, by Elie Wiesel, today, I wrote a poem (if you haven't read it yet, see below), and I've written other poems as a response to the book before (look at the "poem" tag).

Then, a thought came to me- how much worse, in terms of the number of deaths, was the Holocaust than 9/11? The Holocaust has an unknown number of fatalities, but I used the rough estimate of 11 million (as used in the documentary Paperclips and on about.com in an article I found that contained holocaust facts)- 6 million for Jews, and 5 million for the other groups persecuted against, including homosexuals and gypsies.

6,000 people died in 9/11. 11 million divided by 6,000 is roughly 1833. To honor 11 million people, one would spend a minute of silence 1833 times a year, which equals to be about 5 times a day. Compared to 5 minutes a day, a minute a year seems like nothing. That is the difference between the Holocaust and 9/11.

If a person made 100 pencil marks on a piece of paper a day, one mark per fatality, 9/11 deaths would be covered in 60 days, but the Holocaust deaths would take a person 110,000 days, or more than 300 years. It would be an impossible feat to carry out in any less than 3 lifetimes.

What does this tell us? That there are so many things around the world that aren't taken account for. Yet we must value the things in life that are beautiful, because there are too many depressing things in life to think about. I feel like I need to do something to honor this belief, but nothing is coming to me. For now, this blog post must suffice.

Silence: A Poem Inspired by Night, by Elie Wiesel

No more light.
No more warmth.

Cold?

No.

Silence…

Eerie.

A corpse.

Look at me.

This is not me.

It’s different.

It’s horrible.

A figment of madness.

Of death.

Of pain.

Why?

Quiet.

Staring.
I can’t look.

I can’t see.

It’s not there.

Nothing.

But- shoes.

Piled.

Lying there.

Empty.

Without souls,

For they have been

Taken away.

Still there?

Gone.

Monsters.

Nothing comes.

Death.

Silence…

the Other side of the world

The time has come for it to die.
The world has collapsed.
A collapsing world
filled with fear;
filled with pain;
filled with ignorant laughter,
the greatest sin of all,
for it is merely for
the sake of disregarding
the Other side of the world,
the side which people fear,
the side in which people feel pained,
the side which is dying.

But it's at the Other side of the world.

She calls out, but They calm her down.
"Listen to me!
There is fear,
and there is pain,
and there is death!"

"Don't worry, you'll be okay.
You're safe from the fear,
you're safe from the pain,
you're safe from the death.
Worry only about yourself,
and those nearest to you.
Protect yourself and them,
and you'll be okay.
The fear,
and the pain,
and the death-
they are present,
but they're at the Other side of the world."

And she weeps,
and she cries,
and she feigns laughter.
It is heartless laughter,
without a smile,
without feeling,
without hope.

She pretends to go along,
she pretends that she fits in,
and she pretends to laugh.

She is mimicking ignorant laughter,
just like the rest of Them,
just like the rest of Us.

She is the only one who knows.
She knows;
the Other side of the world
is still a side of the world.