(A.D.
2000)
The bones of Cambodia
devastation: for the living to live among the dead…
A few years back (A.D., 2000) my
wife and I, we are traveling in
sea windows,
Very
patient, as if endlessly enduring, a slight paleness to his face,
weighty hair,
We are in a fenced-in section of the once
famous, “Killing Fields”
the hole I am looking into, twenty-thousand bodies were Thrown into—, nearby is a glassed-in
aquarium likened to a small
mausoleum: it slides open, I take
out one of its 9000-skulls, of Pol Pot’s Legacy; the whole area is really just
a fenced in graveyard,
with military police guarding it…a sad reminder!
Bones of the dead seep up to the surface of
the soil, after rainy
day, I know this for a fact, it had just rained, I pick one out of The
soil, along with a red part of a blouse or shirt, “This is
common,” says Kim.
Under
the mystery of this soil that resides here, that has woken up
the world’s once kept secret, Kim sees dimly through the deep
layers of earth, he says:
“I was among them, one of them, I was a grass
eater, and it was my
only nourishment, it was that or a merciless death (he says this All in an opulent voice—thankful
to be alive, unashamed).
We’d pitch afire, and the guards would sit by
it, watch us like
hounds in the cold—nearby, have us do certain jobs until we Dropped
Dead, they seldom fed us.
In the mornings, we toiled in the fields, I’d
run off into the high
weeds, relieve myself amongst the wild plants and bushes, eat Grass,
return, get sick from diarrhea, malnutrition, or worse, but not
defy the guards, for should I have shown the slightest resistance,
With a blink of an eye, they’d shoot you, but
I survived.”
Then I got to thinking: how primitive, how
primordial, he had turned
back to some ancient orbit of time,
that had existed seemingly, Everlastingly, until one day, the mind woke
up and said, ‘I never
thought I’d get down from this leafless tree’ not even knowing What took
place. Anyhow, second thought: perhaps at one time we
were all grass eaters: now refined to: grains, breads, noodles, Cereals
and beers; but once upon a time—likened to the old fairy
tales—nonetheless, we were all grass eaters: in essence, not all That
much different. At what point did we change?
Who’s to say?
And does it matter? And for them that it does
matter, may they
scratch and crack the pits of time—and
if they find out, to their
Surprise or dismay, perhaps they will
conclude we are a newer
found species, newer that is,
than an older lost one: who came Of age.
#3366/6-30-2012
