Friday, August 26, 2022

Redacted


Can one ever truly

A poet's intention

Or are we forever fated

To exist in the dark


To argue over meanings

That may or may not exist

Or exist only for us 

Made up in our minds


All we have are guesses

Based on a set of facts

And vague suppositions

Assumptions and perceptions


Left to fill in the blanks of 

Life's redactions

What  is seen is less important

Than what we believe.




Friday

I F G T

I G T F

G T I F

F T I G

F G T I

T G I F

fin


Tuesday, August 16, 2022

Far From Kiev

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ


I show up

without appointment, 

"Take walk-ins?"


If you can wait 15 minutes

Anna will take you

a young man says

nodding over 

to a blonde woman

working the pink skull

of an elderly man.


I settle into hard vinyl

torn seat skin 

oozing cushion pus, 

and watch Anna

as she carefully separates 

stringy white wisps

with a comb

on the old man’s scalp

snips at strands

as if frightened to make

an irretrievable mistake.


She takes a step back

to inspect,

consider next moves,

snippets of conversation 

pierce our distance 

I try to place 

her familiar

immigrant accent.


She stares into the mirror,

her doppelgänger

pauses for ID,

then looks down 

at the man draped 

like a morgue corpse

face exposed


he isn`t talking;

she spins 

as if to confront 

an approaching stranger

(could she feel my rude 

inquisitive stare?)

switches scissors 

for a buzzing razor 

and with a click

begins a circle dance

hora of sadness 

round a chair 

bolted to the floor.


“I am from small town

near Kiev," she says,


"no one left.”


noone left


my ear is caught,

but you did Anna

you left

peripatetic

palindromic 

Anna

and before you

my grandmother left


from the czar's pogroms

to Putin's war


and here we are today

I am next in line 

waiting my turn

far from Kiev

and not so far.

Thursday, August 4, 2022

Misha and the Wolves

It's a new Netflix documentary that I watched last night. The story of a Holocaust survivor (Misha) who survived the war as a 7 year old orphan in the forests of Belgium with a pack of wolves. Her story was made into a book that was published in the US and internationally in multiple languages. Oprah showed interest and Disney wanted the movie rights. But if the story of a 7 year old orphan living in the forest with wolves sounds incredible, it's because it is, as in not credible. My initial thought (like 10 minutes into the documentary) was, this story should not be difficult to verify, why isn't anyone doing that?

Plenty of people chose to believe Misha's story without questions, from friends and neighbours to animal rights activists, and they all had their reasons. Most were well meaning. The small US publisher who was responsible for convincing Misha to publish her story saw major dollar signs, but even she sent the manuscript to a Holocaust historian for verification, indicating that she had doubts, or at least wanted assurances. The Holocaust historian told her that the story had glaring holes and was most likely untrue. The publisher decided to release it as a memoir anyway, presumably greed getting the better of her. 

People all across Europe especially embraced the book with open arms, school kids made projects about it, and the author was welcomed at readings, conferences and on TV talk shows. The book was a bestseller, a French movie company bought the rights and made it into a feature film. I can understand the European enthusiasm for this feel-good story of courage and redemption. The Holocaust is largely a European tragedy and still an open sore, especially with regards to the perpetrators and their collaborators. Sugaring that bitter history with a little redemption helps it go down with the younger generations. 

The US publisher finally did decide to do a deep dive to verify the story, but only after losing a lawsuit that ruined her personally and financially, again, money being the main motivator (but this time it was about finding ways to avoid paying it rather than how to maximize making it). During the trial the defendant (the publisher) never thought to question the story's authenticity, she was complicit after all in publicizing it. The jury bought Misha's story hook line and sinker since it was never challenged at trial, which seems to be egregious legal malpractice to me, and awarded her a staggering multi-million dollar compensation.

The moral and emotional hazards inherently associated with questioning the credibility of Holocaust survivors and the veracity of their stories is raised in the Netflix documentary. We've all heard harrowing stories of unlikely survival during a time of unimagineable horror. In a way, the unimagineably horrific circumstances made seemingly impossible stories of survival more believable not less. And who are we to question what the survivors say they endured? Even more, as the generation of eye witnesses of the Holocaust passes on, listening to the story told by every remaining survivor becomes beyond important, it's an absolute moral obligation. This is especially true at a time when Holocaust denial and disinformation has exploded online.

It's this issue of what we believe and why we believe it, that ultimately makes the documentary interesting. Living in a time of 'fake news', 'alternative facts', 'post-truth' and conspiracy theories run amok, people choose to believe all kinds of absurd things that on their face defy credulity. Watching this movie resonated in my mind with the Alex Jones sentencing trial on the news these days. As you probably know Jones was found guilty of defamation for his outlandish claims that the Sandy Hook massacre of school children was fabricated. He was sued by the parents of the murdered children for $150 million. Jones defended himself by testifying that he never said anything on air that he didn't completely believe. (I can already hear Donald trump's lawyers arguing the same thing about the 2020 election ie. that he believed and still believes the election was stolen.) The judge answered Jones plainly: Mr. Jones just because you believe something does not make it true. That Jones and trump and their followers might think that believing something is a plausible courtroom defense (like Rudy Giuliani saying we have great theories just no evidence) is somehow indicative of a nadir of general cynicism and mistrust that we have sadly reached in society as a whole.  

Of course, Misha's story is not Alex Jones's (or trump's), but in some respects her falsehood is more terrible. Peddling lies for power and profit is as old as America itself - 'You can fool all the people some of the time... etc.' (Abraham Lincoln), and 'There's a sucker born every minute' (PT Barnum). But telling falsehoods about the Holocaust plays into the hands of the Holocaust deniers and doubters ie. if one 'survivor' is lying about it, maybe they're all lying. At a time when the meaning of truth and fidelity to fact is under constant and wide ranging attack, the insidious erosion of social morality is the ultimate cost. Telling the truth about our greatest tragedy, the Holocaust, is one important antidote to this disease.   

Wednesday, August 3, 2022

The Narcissist

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ


I don't reflect on anything

that's not about me

the image in the mirror 

is all that I can see


the lonely snow-capped mountain

the anxious storm-tossed lake,

the calmly spoken thought

the slip-of-tongue mistake 


the determined bumblebee

the patient foxglove

the stories we've been told 

about the God above


the homeless on the street

the politician's rhetoric

the art in the museum

that appeals to my aesthetic


the news always breaking

about the wars being fought 

or terrorist attacks

that kill a lot


Instagram and Twitter

my Facebook page feed

and something else called TikTok

provide everything I need


I am what I take in

with a degree of empathy

if you call me a narcissist

I won't disagree


it’s always about me

always about me.