Ten Thousand And One Poem by Pamela Davison

Ten Thousand And One

Rating: 5.0


I have counted
Vigorous regrets -
Ten thousand and one,
Measured them
Mile for mile,
And anyone can see
They own me now.

My goodness
Was liquefied
When first I commenced
To commit carnage
In the name
Of a just cause.

Standing in the blood
Of a stranger’s child,
I lost faith in myself;
Consumed by the enormity
Of my actions.

Watching the energy fade
From my victims’ eyes,
I packed my heart in ice,
And embraced my atrocities.

Thus, the shame
By which I die
Ten thousand and one deaths.

Each riddle wants me,
Surrounds my emptiness,

As I wait for madness.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Tears In Rain 15 December 2005

Quite Intense... and sad. So much loss.

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Max Reif 10 September 2005

A very powerful description, almost the whole book 'Crime and Punishment' in a few stanzas. Slightly different situation though. I experienced most of the poem in a chillingly direct way. It's a very universal contemplation of-I think-the 'universal soldier', as one songwriter titled him (and now, her) , and some of the mental/emotional/spiritual effects that can follow upon 'following orders' or even exceeding them in some emotionally sick way. I have to sit with the ending. But you've given me one of the clearest distillations of such a process I've ever read.

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Whoa! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

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