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…

Update and Acts of Good #32 and #33

Acts of good that I did recently:

1) I collected a bunch of leftover food from home and brought it to our school's compost bin: three cheers to Mollie for setting that up!

2) I turned off a lot of lights today, around the house, and at school. Yay!

Anyway, a short update:

• Our school play is going to have its opening night tomorrow, and I'm kind of scared because a lot of people aren't ready since we missed two days of school because of the snow.
• Umm, I kinda touched on that up there ^. We had no school for two days because of our weather- thick black ice, drifting snow, etc.- and power outages.
• The end of this trimester at school is coming to an end, so I have a feeling that I'm going to have to start bracing myself against the tests that will probably come rushing my way- which means that I might not be posting as often as I usually do, so just a heads up on that. Is that phrase even proper grammar?
• I'm reading Night, by Elie Wiesel, in school, and I'm extremely depressed about it. By the way, if you were wondering, the poem that I posted on here earlier, the Other side of the world, was inspired by that book. I'm also going to probably post something else that I wrote today as a response of Night.
• On a happier note, we're having an advisory- which, in case you don't know, is like a small group of students from different grades that basically hangs out twice a week together and has a teacher who is basically the head of it who you go to with any questions or concerns you have- ice cream party tomorrow!

So... I have to go for now, and this weekend is going to be extremely hectic... so, I'll write to you whenever possible!

-Cora