Another Snow - 2003

Prologue
Easter 2002


It is the morning of Easter.
Across the world,
rivers of blood spill,
and the mourning never stops.

On my quiet windowsill
an amaryllis blooms so red ---
the color of a fresh cut.
An appropriate Easter Lily
in the worst of times.


March 31, 2002

Another Snow - 2003

The fall is heavy. The branch
outside my window is white.

A sky of milk. I look upward.
Again, as it was last year,
the red amaryllis is in bloom
on my quiet windowsill, pale now
though, and fading like blood
poured into sand.

Last year I wrote the poem above.
Last year it was Afghanistan.
Last year it was revenge.
Last year it was Israel and Palestine….

This year Iraq---liberation through death
What could be more liberating?

Shall I become the first martyr here?

Shall I place the barrel of the gun
into my mouth? Shall I hold it upside
down aiming it toward the palate, and with
the trigger guard pointing at the ceiling,
press harder than one who's never
fired a gun before would imagine,
sending a hollow-point tearing through
my thought process? I could leave a note
behind that says: "I protest the
carnage being laid across the face of Iraq.
I protest the real reason for the slaughter
of innocents. I protest the reactions of those
who say war is good…war is justified.
I protest the actions of those who arrest activist priests.
I protest the actions of school officials who threaten
some staff members with the specter of unemployment in
these hard days, should they speak too freely of this
wrong-doing, or, as in one case, for wearing a pin that argues
the point against war, in violation of the school dress code.
I protest against a desensitized nation that now
grows bored with the television coverage of the war."

Shall I become the first martyr here?

There was a movie about a woman who fell
in love with a priest. It was an impossible
affair. At the end of the film, the woman
walked through the snow wearing a long
dark coat. She stopped, sat on the ground,
opened a gallon can she was carrying,
poured gasoline over herself, and lit a match.
A martyr for impossible love. I was tripping on acid
that day…sitting almost alone in the Symphony
Theatre, with the walls threatening to devour me.
The movie priest sat and looked out of his window.
The second feature was "The Ruling Class"
starring Peter O'Toole.

The snow is so thick. The petals of the amaryllis
have curled backward toward the stem in surrender of
it's brief lifetime. Pale pale, as the skin of the dead.
And pale as blood soaking into the sands.

The gun lies in the drawer of the nightstand
still tasting metallic. And I write this instead
of scattering my own petals of brain and bone
across the white wall behind me. Outside,
the world is white. Here, the room is white,
and the color of blood, in my mind, is as
scarlet as the deepest sin against humanity.

If I silence myself, I make a forgettable statement.
Ten minutes of fame across the screens of America,
then the ensuing boredom of the masses who want
a more sensational act to entertain them.
A man will sit and look out of his window.


A. Murray March 30, 2003