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Thousand Yard Stare
“Their eyes stared blankly into space. They had a
million mile stare. They had seen forever.”
--Robert Heinlein.
It was everywhere
at Valley Forge in 1777,
chilled to the bone,
hungry, demoralized,
low on blankets and ammunition.
Rising again in 1863
after the Battle of Gettysburg,
a Confederate private,
now a prisoner of war,
3,000 dead,
23,000 wounded,
capped by a glimpse
of Lincoln touring
the terrible battlefield.
Evident once more in 1950
in Korea at the
Battle of the Chosin Reservoir,
where 30,000 American GI’s
made a stand against
120,000 Chinese troops.
Present in 1968
at the Battle of Khe Sunh,
just south of the DMZ
where U.S. Marines were vastly
out-numbered by the North Vietnamese.
Persistent in 2004
In Iraq, at Fallujah,
Baghdad and Mosul,
the inception of the
New Millennium Crusades,
the never-ending conflict.
The thousand yard stare,
so full of death and shock and awe,
the pupils are dilated with paralysis,
images focus behind the lens,
and the occipital lobe
is blood-soaked
and bullet-riddled,
joining the ears
who’ve gone deaf
from the shrieks and screams--
and I see it all around me today,
as millions of Americans
battle the pandemic,
economic catastrophe,
and the rising seas,
while preparing for armed conflict
in our Second Civil War.
Glenn Buttkus
Posted over at d'Verse Poet's Pub
11 comments:
I see it too, Glenn. Shatteringly accurate.
I really love this, and how often the war being fought are not for themselves but for each other or simply survive.
Fucking sobering brother! I wanna say no way to your final stanza, but this country feels ripe for a social explosion.
This is way too accurate. Well done.
I see it, too, Glenn, sadly. More than sadly.
Things could be different. We only have one thing to change: Our minds. Imagine.
We never do learn. And we are never prepared.
You served up reality here. It has been disturbing to watch.
Lessons never learned
Wow. You've really pulled this together so powerfully. The same stare on thousands of different eyes throughout the centuries and still it persists. I hope your Second Civil War doesn't come.
Chilling, Glenn, both the history and description of the thousand-yard stare and the ominous prediction in your poem. People the world over are hungry and demoralized, but nobody expects that of the United States, one of the richest countries in the world. The combination of a poor president and a pandemic has done its worst. I hope there is a way through to a better life and history doesn’t repeat itself.
I despair that we never learn from our past.
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