G. Conroy

Found Poem in The Twilight Zone
            (of Nona Fernandez)

“We didn’t start the fire, no we didn’t light it.
But we tried it fight it.” Bill Joel

                        1-
It was a time of marches and protest.
It was a time of shocking headlines.
A time of attack, kidnapping, strikes, crimes, scams,
lawsuits, indictments.
A time of ghosts too

Of mustached monsters.
A time of TV specials on torture.
A time of dark rooms, of women locked up with those rats.
A time of spray-painted graffiti on walls.
A time of banners, assemblies, petitions, meetings.
A time of our first militant actions, first sit-ins, first detentions.

A time of lists.
Long lists.
That we searched for the whereabouts of friends who’d been arrested.
A time of lemons, salt, the smell of tear gas.
Jets of water mixed with gas that not only knocked you down, but also left
you with a stink of rot that lingered for days.

                        2-

It was a time of fences and virgins too.
It was a time of grenades and poor little left hand too.
It was a time of projectiles and slaughter, too.
It was a time of maimed, burnt, slashed and bullet-ridden bodies, too.
It was a time of disappearances and absences, too

                        3-
It was Chile, in a time of Pinochet.
It was a time like any other time.
A place like any other place.

The world laughs at Chilean democracy.

 

G. Conroy finds stuff everywhere he goes: keys, ID’s, empty wallets and sometimes poems.