Horror Movies and Lies

Well,all is back to normal here. Animal Planet in the other room and kids having pizza for lunch. We are going to Brooklyn later and then I am off to the poetry party at Miriam's. Really happy about this,and the weather is good and not incredibly hot. Wondering if Jr. can be trusted to trim my hair before I go...NOT the bangs as she butchered poor Kate's around Xmas time last year. Just the ends. Not that she has agreed to do it yet...
Last weekend watched lots of bad horror movies of Spanish and Italian origin...and not bad enough to be good either. What is up with women getting raped in these things, and then showing no ill effects afterwards? Like rape is as normal as eating or breathing for all concerned, and an acceptable thing for men to do. Saw ONE good film in a day full of horror movies--an italian movie called "The Red Queen Kills Seven Times," or something close to that. There was the usual rape scene in that, but at least afterward the woman seemed traumatized. Really missing Badgerdaddy's blog, as I could get his take on this as well as feedback from other horror buffs who read his blog.



Terminus

By Nicholas Christopher


March 9, 2000

Here is a piece of required reading
at the end of our century
the end of a millennium that began with the crusades


The transcript of an interview
between a Red Cross doctor
and a Muslim girl in Bosnia
twelve years old
who described her rape by men
calling themselves soldiers
different men every night one after the other
six seven eight of them
for a week
while she was chained by the neck
to a bed in her former schoolhouse
where she saw her parents and her brothers
have their throats slit and tongues cut out
where her sister-in-law
nineteen years old and nursing her baby
was also raped night after night
until she dared to beg for water
because her milk had run dry
at which point one of the men
tore the child from her arms
and as if he were "cutting an ear of corn"
(the girl's words)
lopped off the child's head
with a hunting knife
tossed it into the mother's lap
and raped the girl again
slapping her face
smearing it with her nephew's blood
and then shot the mother
who had begun to shriek
with the head wide-eyed in her lap
shoving his gun into her mouth
and firing twice


All of this recounted to the doctor
in a monotone
a near whisper in a tent
beside an icy river
where the girl had turned up frostbitten
wearing only a soiled slip
her hair yanked out
her teeth broken


All the history you've ever read
tells you this is what men do
this is only a sliver of the reflection
of the beast
who is a fixture of human history
and the places you heard of as a boy
that were his latest stalking grounds
Auschwitz Dachau Treblinka
and the names of their dead
and their numberless dead whose names have vanished
each day now find their rolls swelled
with kindred souls
new names new numbers
from towns and villages
that have been scorched from the map


1993 may as well be 1943
and it should be clear now
that the beast in his many guises
the flags and vestments
in which he wraps himself
and the elaborate titles he assumed
can never be outrun
....


As that girl with the broken teeth
loaded into an ambulance
strapped down on a stretcher
so she wouldn't claw her own face
will never outrun him
no matter where she goes
solitary or lost in a crowd
the line she follows
however straight or crooked
will always lead her back to that room
like the chamber at the bottom
of Hell in the Koran
where the Zaqqum tree grows
watered by scalding rains
"bearing fruit like devils' heads"


In not giving her name
someone has noted at the end
of the transcript that the girl herself
could not or would not recall it
and then describes her as a survivor


Which of course is from the Latin
meaning to live on
to outlive others


I would not have used that word.