Tortures - a poem

[central scrutinizer]

http://www.polishworld.com/wsz/

by 1994 Nobel Prize winner Wislawa Szymborska

Tortures
Nothing has changed.
The body is susceptible to pain,
it must eat and breathe air and sleep,
it has thin skin and blood right underneath,
an adequate stock of teeth and nails,
its bones are breakable, its joints are stretchable.
In tortures all this is taken into account.

Nothing has changed.
The body shudders as it shuddered
before the founding of Rome and after,
in the twentieth century before and after Christ.
Tortures are as they were, it's just the earth that's grown smaller,
and whatever happens seems right on the other side of the wall.

Nothing has changed. It's just that there are more people,
besides the old offenses new ones have appeared,
real, imaginary, temporary, and none,
but the howl with which the body responds to them,
was, is and ever will be a howl of innocence
according to the time-honored scale and tonality.

Nothing has changed. Maybe just the manners, ceremonies, dances.
Yet the movement of the hands in protecting the head is the same.
The body writhes, jerks and tries to pull away,
its legs give out, it falls, the knees fly up,
it turns blue, swells, salivates and bleeds.

Nothing has changed. Except for the course of boundaries,
the line of forests, coasts, deserts and glaciers.
Amid these landscapes traipses the soul,
disappears, comes back, draws nearer, moves away,
alien to itself, elusive, at times certain, at others uncertain of its own existence,
while the body is and is and is
and has no place of its own.

[undergroundpanther]

1. Tears well up

And it is because this poem it is truth.

And because of what I have been through It resonates in me..I feel fresh,the rage at the sickness of it all,my soul feels the body confines like a prison pinned it cannot escape the assaults it faces, sickness,accidents,the hunger,thirst,rejection, the words,the depression the scars of trauma..And the body ,my body,it fears humans and it fears and hates this world ,it was forced to be born into to be betrayed,overwhelmed, raped and hurt again and again..

My soul it also fears being here in this body in this world.It is not from this place of pain..Being Present here now it feels like dread... I ask myself, when will people STOP torturing one another, with threats,insults,snarks,fists,rapes,sadism.

WHEN?When will the psychopaths among us be separated from those who wish to inflict no harm on others? When will the cancerous seductive fog of domination and competition enveloping this earth be GONE?

Will my body ever feel at home,reasonably safe again,when can my soul find rest and relax into it's own space here ,spaceI hope will not be violated again?

I don't see it here any time soon.. So day after day I wait,I stress jumping panic at shadows and people in my peripheral vision..the nightmares the images intrude ,Sometimes I want to die,hoping there is some safe place somewhere where love rules over the delusion: control and the people there are fearlessly kind,and fiercly ethical,and love erach other more than thier fear of thier own emotional discomforts at seeing suffering of another,.A mythic place where it doesn't HURT to exist. A place not like here,where you are forced by the biggest wealythies have it alls to never stop paying to exist here ,you sell yourself day after day, scared because the body has a rape-able sex orafice that puts the body in danger because of gender. I pay because this body requires some food,water like all bodies do, it feels pain,and wasnts rest,wants love,and the desire to trust in a touch of gentleness that it is not a poison love bomb.DEsperate to find peace ..But I fear that kind of world only exists in my imagination.

And to imagine it hurts me ,like losing innocence all over again,So I fade it to grey lest it's vividness turn into a suicide urge to escape this world and and release my body and get out ..and to quell it I numb I wait again.Wait for the end ans I anticipate the knife in my heart to be twisted by some event,the word to sting, to fret over the bill I can't pay to feed the wealthy man who has more than he can use,I dread the boot to stomp my face again..and I ask WHY? Why?Why?