Je Suis Charlie—New Anguish and a Poem

The news of yesterday’s killings in Paris was heartbreaking.  It naturally strikes a special nerve will all of us around the world who speak our own minds, who express unpopular, even outrageous opinions.  A quick look at covers from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo quickly reveals that it was no mild Mad or even The Onion.  It was biting with an almost savage glee.  And when a target was picked—Islamic extremists—for example it was gleeful in poking its thumb in the eye, rubbing salt in the wound.  The editors and staff positively strutted in the face of a previous bombing and constant death threats.  I would have called them childish.  I would have protested the broad brush they chose to use.

But I would always—always—defended their right to have their say.  It’s what I do.

And now they are dead.  I grieve for them.  I cry for justice.

But the blood was still dripping in Paris when certain familiar voices were raised…

Je Suis Charlie

After the attack on Charlie Hebdo January 7, 2014

It is always the same.

I stand over the spreading pool of blood

          grieving, shaking my fist in anger,

          seeking justice not revenge for the

                   the villagers of Mai Lai,

                   children of Sandy Hook,

                   the Afghan wedding party,

                   the Gaza hospital patients,

                   a Black boy on cold asphalt,

          you know the drill.

And you loom suddenly before me

          with your sneer and leer,

          kicking aside the bodies,

          pointing your finger

          and demanding

          Where was your voice —

                   at Pol Pot’s killing fields,

                   the Munich Olympic Village,

                   Ruby Ridge and Wacco,

                   9/11,

                   the drive-by at the South Side playground,

          As if those deaths trumped

                   the ones at my feet—

or excused them.

As if the killers you hate

were more heinous and despicable

than those who shed this blood.

                   As if I did not mourn those

or protest the perpetrators.

                   You just assumed in your bigoted rage

                             that I did not

                             and that I, like you, put value

                             only on certain lives.

Here you are again today.

The blood of today’s crumpled bodies

          mixes with ink,

          spreads across scattered cartoons.

I weep for Liberty and yes—

          those once human lumps

          of shredded flesh.

You care not whit for these dead,

          if you had known who they were,

          you would have hated them,

          cheeky Frogs and Commies

          everyone of them.

But their killers made a claim for Allah

          and that made them your favorite

          current object of revile.

Before I can raise my tear streaked face,

          you stand there and accuse me

          of cowardly silence.

Yet here I am, unsilent,

          my voice raised against fanaticism,

          unreason and bigotry,

          for freedom,

          yea even the right to be an asshole.

But that is not enough.

I must, you say, if I love justice,

          hold every man, woman, or child

          who kneels five times a day

          to equal account for these murders

          and make them all pay

thousands of times over

with their own blood.

         

I see and condemn a sliver of fanatics,

          you see whole races equally guilty.

There seems to be not much difference

          between you and these killers,

          except maybe degree or,

          perhaps, time.

—Patrick Murfin