A Tribute To Fresh Kills - Poem By Rebecca Campbell
A TRIBUTE TO FRESH KILLS*
Here we inter in haste our offerings of ashes to Ashur**,
their inundating infill hopefully laying to rest
rumors of our rulers' underlying fault;
Over three thousand sacrificial victims vaporized
in the soaring twin temples of Enki**
Likewise incinerated on the larger island,
together mingled before being disrespectfully dispersed
upon this plotters' field; bloated, blighted mounds
pregnant with miscarriage of justice
Swelling with ripe swill riparian marshes
anointed by concentrated oil,
reflecting in filthy rainbow-wreathed refractions
those of ancient Asian lands:
A tribute of Fresh Kills.
A myriad more will follow these to their fate;
so many more, they must be elsewhere laid:
The betrayed,
they who sought to honor those who died
by seeking their remains,
as well as neighbors of the sacrificial site,
and those we process through prolonged provincial wars
Finding in the great necropolis of the larger island
only dustclouds of doom to cover leaders' lies,
Entombing them with the future of our nation:
A Tribute of Fresh Kills
Here we inter the truth about fell treason in high places,
soon set to fall through falsehoods removed,
to see the real hoods of executioners
Evidence of evil embedded in burial plots,
along with guilt and implausible denial,
Of immolative implements of empire employed in our name
Now blotted by bloodshed flooding our own soil
to wage our war of terror on the world:
A tribute of Fresh Kills.
A myriad more capital offenses against nature and humanity
particularly our own
Will propitiate through profits the deities of death we serve,
until we consciously exhume from tells untold
Concealed costs of hidden holocausts our country has committed,
Consigning them by right to be consumed
like those whom we have criminally cremated
in searing rays of shared reality we resurrect in reverence:
A tribute to Fresh Kills.
Here we inter the American dream materialized;
its illicit illusions having nightmares made:
We have become the wretched refuse of our scheming shores
the tempest-tossed
force-fed the images of our own destruction
cunningly conceived by those who
with blackened marble hearts they hide
in whitewashed marble halls
most hate our freedom.
Yet Liberty still stands:
she beckons that we now with her uphold
the torch of truth that can yet set us free:
A tribute to Fresh Kills.
A myriad more must together with us take
the torch of truth to all unholy relics of our past,
while giving sanctuary to our sacred oracles;
Must use the torch of truth to crimes reveal,
while cauterizing traumas they have caused,
then treating wounds and wounders with compassion.
With our own admissions, we can fling wide the golden door;
by carrying her torch, we can coax Liberty from off her pedestal
To freely move among the peoples of the earth,
appointing us new paths
Finally healing, by full exercise of human rights,
all extended human wrongs:
A tribute to Fresh Kills.
*The world's second-largest landfill on Staten Island, New York, meaning, ironically, "pure riverbed or estuary" in Dutch, its double meaning in English being more sinister.
**Gods of ancient Assyria, now Iraq: Asshur, the nation's namesake and prinicipal deity; Enki, the mercurial trickster god of commerce, communication and crime.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oMeUS4DMg8




