Sure we've all seen the wonderful posts on Facebook urging us to like the page and pay our respects to a kid who we didn't really know, don't really care about, and probably won't remember next week. The unfortunate finality of death is illustrated in technicolor via the carelessness and forgetfulness of the modern-day individual. We have short attention spans, and when you're out of style, you're out of sight. And you know what they say about being out of sight...
We comfort ourselves in the knowledge that, had we known just how unhappy that person was, we would have been their friend, bought them ice cream, or even invited them to our birthday party. All the while we ignore the fact that people who feel trapped inside are not shouting it to the world around them. When you feel as though your life doesn't matter, you don't go looking for help and you don't want to tell anyone.
All of this was going through my mind as I attempted to decipher the meaning behind Ed Roberson's "Beauty's Standing" poem number six. I was intrigued by the title: "(the first causality is where you live)" and I can't help but agree with it in retrospect. As someone who moved around a lot during my childhood, I can tell you that various places have had profound effects on me. When I was going through verbal and physical abuse in First grade, I developed a curious "light touch" as a coping mechanism. I thought that the material possessions of my bullying classmates could help my happiness, seeing as they appeared content so long as they had them. Noticing my daily new band-aids, my parents decided to home school their children. Living completely at home then, I was able to be truly happy. When I returned to the world of institutionalized education after moving, I was once again thrown into a world of verbal abuse. "You dance? You must be gay." I was ostracized and labeled as a fag.
"see the red shadow of the ghost crossing the walls
where we live"
This idea of a red shadow has me imagining a boy lying in a pool of his own blood. The blood surrounds his body, slightly resembling a red shadow. As a ghost haunting the "quiet house" in the beginning of the poem, why shouldn't he adopt a red shadow to silhouette his movements, as a gruesome reminder to people wondering what happened? If it was hatred that killed him, and then apathy that forgot him, why shouldn't he serve as a testament to how much hurt doing nothing can bring about?
I started to scratch, burn, and cut myself around my freshman year of High School. None of those really stuck, but the problems causing them didn't leave. I have a short blade of Greek design. Hours would pass of me staring at the naked sword sitting in my hands. My heart screamed, "Oh happy dagger, here is thy sheath!" (And you thought I was kidding when I told you depression got me into English.)
"...revolving patrol
lights a spun radiant weapon a night-
stick elucidation..."
For some, it takes a true disaster to break imaginary world they live in. This image of a police cruiser sitting in the driveway across the street is unshakable. Imagine that your best friend lived across the street from you. Now imagine one night where there are red lights revolving, lighting up the neighborhood as they rotate around their small globes, sending a gleam off the officer's nightstick as he enters the silent house.
Proximity makes the tragedy. How close are you to what happened? When we look at what happened in Haiti a while back (if you can still remember that is), we find a wonderful example of how distorted distance makes things. In one of my more recent classes, a student told me that she found the events that took place inspiring. She found happiness in an absolutely bleak world. Would she have found it if she experienced it? If her best friend experienced it? If her family? No. The tragedy became a comedy, according to theatrical standards, in her mind as she was safe and sound several thousand miles away.
If you are in my Creative Writing class, reading this, and you mention something like "Poor you," or "Are you okay now?" then I very well might laugh on the inside. Before the semester started, I hadn't existed in your world. My story is not ground breaking or astounding. It's common. It's normal. Some of this, I haven't even shared with my closest friends. None of it, I want to.
This poem drew out darkness from me like a needle. Black and red, shadow and blood, this is what I see crossing the walls, Mr. Roberson. I see death. My death.
I spy... suicide.
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