Now lower your flag.
Taps plays softly, as if...
I saw you on the lawn, and cried.
Transmission is mechanical, and has no mercy.
But no, this too is political,
So people die needlessly.
Needlessly.
When the body becomes contaminated by hate
in any form
it dies
What was once called common sense has been labeled and is no more.
How convenient.
Now lower your flag, for taps is indeed playing
softly
as if sorrow was love.
Love indeed knows sorrow.
Hand in hand they follow you, the negligent, above reproach,
the excrement of your eloquence
becomes their red carpet
and there remains blood on your hands.
Now lower your flag.
Author notes
AIDS/HIV is a disease, just like cancer. It doesn't care, just like cigarettes don't care. How come smokers are quarantined to smoking outside? To protect the public. If that was done when HIV was first discovered, we wouldn't even be talking about it...and yet it was called a "human rights" issue for some reason, and now it can't be contained, or cured, just delayed. (This too is worthy of condemnation, that there is no cure, and that the treatments cost so much)
This piece is not intended to be inflammatory, just extremely harsh, and directed toward the "scientific" community and government bodies that refused to prosecute containment of this blight while it had the chance to. It was politically incorrect to track and quarantine the infected persons back then. They should have done it anyway. It should be incumbent on that very community to bear the entire cost and burden of finding a cure NOW. Right now. It's already too late.
A contest entry
- International World AIDS Day 2008 by lordoftherings.
9000 points, ended January 24, 15 entries
Honorable mention
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
-
My first comment is that I think your fallacy is flawed because I feel you are confusing "regulated" with "quarantine". The law states that smokers are regulated to smoke outside not quarantined to smoke outside. They were regulated space in public areas and only a few establishments built smoking rooms and is probably where you are coming to the conclusion they were quaratined. My other issue with your hypothesis in your comments is that infected persons should have been quarantined in the beginning of the pandemic. Since unlike tuberculosis, where the virus is spread through the air particles and quaratnitne is a necissity, HIV was not this type of virus so the answer was not quarantine the individuals but educate the public which is where we were stopped by all levels of government. Without dissemination of information, ignorance remained at the top. At one point in time, US did examine the possibility of quarantining the infected, the idea was to place them out on a remote island and let them forge for themselves. Even our prisoners get better treatment than what these individuals would recieve if this had materialized.
As for your poem, I love the activism of the poem. The diction chosen produces the irony of the situation. I will have to remember the imagery I had upon reading just the title "Eloquent Excrement" . Most pêople would probably disagree with what has been penned. That is their prerogative, but on the delivery of what is penned is the true craft of poetry. It opens a dialogue and this one definately will open the dialogue.
Thank you for entering this contest.
gregg
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