Never Read Out Loud
Photo by Denny Müller on Unsplash
toes arc up from swollen sores,
the reek of damp straw,
and cold air tickles my nipples.
strips of living dead scabs,
flesh aches swallowing sleep,
each throb a tick of time.
Nine... ten hours,
since sun disappeared,
bent out of shape
by jagged blade that tore,
gouged and remade light
to dark red rivers of fire.
in this shallow tomb,
nor can I burn the light
of this wrong when
finally I meet almighty god.
a drone to drown the flaming
shape of those letters,
solidified behind my eyes
like hammered metal.
this hot and heavy heartbeat,
made these rotting circles of meat
that meet above my nose.
slaves are not allowed to read.
I re-worked this poem today from the original that was part of the portfolio of poems that were included in my university final assessment. This collection and dissertation was focused on the theme of slavery.
I researched this subject in 2006 while spending a month in america travelling in the deep south, before visiting family in North Carolina. I penned over 200 poems on that trip while visiting various sites including an old slave plantation.
This poem was written while sitting in the cellar of the slave owners house. The cellar was used as a holding cell for slaves who had broken the rules. I can still remember to this day staring at the iron rings set deep into the concrete walls where they used to chain the slave up.
As I sat there I tried to put myself in the mind of someone chained up in that environment and brutally tortured for the most inconsequential things. That is when the poem above flowed out.
Slavery is a subject that beggars belief, especially when you get deep into researching the specifics of the intense cruelty and inhumanity that happened. I spent some time reviewing all 200 poems a while ago and realized that there are many poems in that collection that speak to that inhumanity far better than I could ever write now.
I will be sharing a select few with the steem community over the next few months. I feel that it is important to remember these types of things, to revisit them and understand them so that the lessons of history are truly learned.
As Martin Luther King said:
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter!
All pictures used are creative commons licence, credited beneath the image. If you have enjoyed this poem, you can check out my homepage @raj808 for similar content. Thank you.
The Ink Well
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Shared on twitter... in the hopes that people will remember, and learn from humankind's past atrocities.
#posh sharing steem with the wider world
https://twitter.com/rowanj808/status/1233771901148975106?s=20
@raj808, Slavery is very Dark Spot on Humanity and this Spot haunted many and still haunting many in this World. Thank you so much for sharing this indepth piece. Stay blessed.
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Absolutely, I agree. To learn is to understand, to remember is to never repeat such things again... at least I hope so.
Thanks for reading chireerocks
Absolutely true. We have to learn from the past experience otherwise there is no meaning of the Process Of Evolution. Stay blessed.
I agree. The Turner Contemporary in Margate has an excellent exhibition We will Walk about Art and Resistance in the American South. People used a variety of ways to protest including the most famous, the walks, but also things like yard art and quilt making. The exhibition has a time line which sets out the laws that were passed to uphold slavery including that slaves were forbidden to learn to read, and acts of resistance from the first uprising in Haiti in the 1500s and Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley published in 1773, the first book by an African American to be published and only the second by a woman.
Thanks for sharing that link, I've just been taking a look and I'd love to visit that exhibition but being an impoverished writer from up north I'm not able to get down south at the moment.
But even just reading their website gives me an impression of the amazing exhibits.
That opening image
Is so striking. Thanks again for sharing that, and for checking out my poem shani :)
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Excellent. I feel his rage, his regret, his intelligence, the trob of extreme pain. I can smell the damp straw. I know the wrong, the great wrong. His very name, since he could read it, is an affront. Very powerful poem.
I am wondering about this bit
Is he angry at his eyes for reading? I can't bear thinking that his eyes were gouged out.
This is great, as I felt those visceral feelings that day in the cell imagining Ham's life as I wrote these words. As a poet, it made me happy to know that this comes across strongly.
It's a hard subject, especially when trying a persona poem like this.
But I'm afraid it is the later... his eyes were gouged out. That's why he is blaming the letters for the rotting circles of meat.
I've never been one to shy away from the hard truths in my poetry, especially when I was younger, and it's something that was done on occasion.
This is one of those poems that I hoped that would make the reader feel angry, sad and even the hopelessness that Ham felt.
Thanks for reading owasco, this poem was 10 years in the making as I changed a lot today in the the edit from the original written in 2006.
That is very interesting! do you think you changed any of your meanings, or did you make them clearer? Were they just proofreading changes? Vocab choices?
So this is gruesome this poem. It's dirty and disgusting and leaves me in his rage, and I get regret, not sadness, not yet, there's still too much pride for sadness. Is the rewrite more gruesome, or less?
The rewrite is no less gruesome, it is just clearer in the way it is arranged and some vocab changes. Also, I did change some of the imagery a little but it was a good 1st draft in how visceral it was before the proofread.
I'm older, and I hope, a better editor of my own work than I was at the age of 27 when this was originally written. I can't remember exactly what I changed in the re-write now. Lol,and it was only ten days ago, but I do remember that when I read it with my internal dialogue switched off, like someone who had never read it before or knew what it alluded to, there were parts that weren't quite clear.
So I focused on tightening them up :)
gaaaaaaahhhh!!!! They gouged out his eyes!!!!!!!!!
I cannot unsee this now
Ah, Raj, never one to shy away from horror, however graphic and intense. I applaud you, honest, I do, but I cover my eyes when I read these things! ;)
It is visceral in its uncompromising telling of this tale of history. They did this to people, just for learning how to read!
The depths of depravity of the worst of the human soul never ceases to astound and sicken me.
But, without the dark there is no light I guess.
I could do with less of the darkness. Historical fiction (and military!) have been too horrible for me to read until very recently--forcing myself through scenes like this eye-gouging (and witch burnings). It's one thing to know such things happened. It's another to read lurid details. Do I hafta? Part of me dies when I confront the horrific truth of what people have done to each other, and continue to do even in this enlightened age of science and reason.
Fiction conveys the horror if it better than textbook summaries can.
Hello @raj808, thank you for sharing this creative work! We just stopped by to say that you've been upvoted by the @creativecrypto magazine. The Creative Crypto is all about art on the blockchain and learning from creatives like you. Looking forward to crossing paths again soon. Steem on!
always great to see you @creativecrypto
I miss the days when @sndbox was around. Steem is truly less without such a great project. Hope things are going well with the magazine :)