The recent coup in Myanmar brought to mind my Burmese coworkers from my days in an Amazon warehouse. Many of them had escaped the constant wars and religious persecution in the Chin province. When I was working on an ekphrastic project and looking for inspirational photos, one friend shared two watercolors painted by Chin refuges. I found them haunting and, after some research, the words quickly flowed. Here is the first of those, along with the painting that inspired it.
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| By Lian Tuang |
On the brightest of days,
there is still darkness at the woodline,
shadows and voices
of those who stormed out
in his younger days,
killed his father,
taking his brothers to join their fight
for liberty.
They did not want his
gimp leg and bowed back.
He was left behind
to toil the fields for his mother, sisters,
later for his own wife, children until
The nightmares of the forest returned,
new fighters for new causes,
raging from the trees
to take again
all he loved off to war.
Somehow,
they never found their way back
to enjoy that hard earned freedom.
Those that would emancipate our souls
have all come through here:
The People’s Armies,
The Liberation Squads,
The Democratic Militias –
all freedom fighting for
some force fed ideal.
With no more family to contribute,
they torched his home,
they pillaged and burned his crops,
leaving him in ruins
to rebuild
again and again.
The wars have grown silent now,
but those woods,
they still hold their faces,
this forest
is still alive with their voices
as they rage through the night
in an old man’s nightmares,
Where freedom
is just a bad dream
casting shadows and darkness
upon the brightest of days.
_______________
—Previously published online at Project Agent Orange.
| Copyright © 2021 by Maik Strosahl Michael E. Strosahl has focused on poetry for over twenty years, during which time he served a term as President of the Poetry Society of Indiana. He relocated to Jefferson City, Missouri, in 2018 and currently co-hosts a writers group there. |
Thanks for putting us into the head of one of the survivors. Thanks also for the mention of Project Agent Orange.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'd like to add: as for Project Agent Orange link by Maik--especially since it is in dire need of submissions ( https://projectagentorange.wordpress.com/about/ ).
ReplyDeleteMichael, “Project Agent Orange” sounds so specialized! Can you provide a few specifications or suggestions as to what you might be looking for? (I don’t see any specifications or suggestions on the site itself.) I invite you to use Moristotle & Co.’s search facility to find posts over its 15 years that you might like to republish on the Wordpress site. One possible item just popped into my head: a chapter set in Vietnam from one of edRogers’ novels (Unwanted President): “Chapter 16: The Truth Is Known .”
DeleteGood idea. See if Ed Roger would be interested. Please tell and/or send others in this direction also.
DeleteAs for the guidelines, any work that shows man's inhumanity to nature, humans, even aliens. Guidelines can be found here: https://projectagentorange.wordpress.com/about/
There are also three links to examples.
Ed is more than interested; he would like to support you, and I will submit some things to you in his stead.
Delete