Why I Like Starwars (A Geek Poem) Poem by Frank Witte

Why I Like Starwars (A Geek Poem)

Rating: 2.6


From Episode I I even love Jar Jar Binks
although many out there think he stinks.
But he actually made my daughters laugh
and that for me is already almost enough.
But he represents the clumsy and the naive
and somehow I simply have to believe
there's a place for that in our universe;
else I would expect life to be even worse.
For that's the real phantom menace of our lives;
to under estimate the weak, the meek and the clumsy alike.

From Episode II I cherish the wooden acting out a love,
a romance across the stars, Damocles's sword up above.
The harmless passion that to some may seem to lack depth
as the acting of the human actors may appear so unapt.
But isn't it like that all around us and almost every day?
Why would it be different in Starwars in any way?
Depth doesn't come from words from a script, so easy to say.
It comes from our choices in life, they give our characters away.
From what we hope to achieve and what drives us there;
'to stop people from dying' and to bring an end to all despair.
To cling to the all powerfull and to forget humility isn't rare,
and is a first step down a path from which we need to beware.

From Episode III the battle between Obi Wan and Anakin
is what all I love about Starwars visually culminates in.
When words can no longer express pain and betrayal
it is left to the lightsabres to continue that last wail.
It are the anger, the hate, the dissapointment that prevail
as the coming of darknes and the arrival of security are hailed.
'So this is how freedom dies, under thunderous applause';
not popcorn entertainment but a stir to democracy's cause.
Ofcourse you don't need Starwars to be aware of all of this,
but there's no reason to ignore it as long as ignorance is bliss.

So when finally the Republic falls and paves the way for the Empire
and all dreams of peace, justice, freedom and security have conspired
to bring about this nightmare of bureacracy, technology and steel
it have been choices of individual men and women turning that wheel.

Now the failure of the massive organised resistance to evil is known,
we learned the imperial stormtrooper was begotten by the republican clone.
To believers in statehood hope's lost as the emperor ascends to the throne,
so in Episode IV the tale of the Starwars universe drastically changes its tone.
For A New Hope that is presented here, not a man, not a woman, but a new idea.
Hope is not about a succesfull onslaught against millions of droids, so much is clear.
It is not about the starfleet that an impervious rebellion deploys, no nowhere near.
It's about the redemption of a loved one who has no one but himself left to fear.
So it is time for the Skywalker twins to enter the stage
wihout any preparation or training they have come of age.
A farmer's son and a senator's daughter will wage
a quiet battle against their father's war-torn rage.

But the Empire strikes back, with the father in a leading role,
as the Rebels are scattered through out the galaxy as a whole.
In a battle he would have killed his own kin without any remorse,
but the young Skywalker submerges in to the world of the Force;
that mysterious power that binds the Galaxy into a coherent one.
It is on that battlefield that the final struggle has now begun.
Because in the force every move, every thought, every choice matters
as one possible future becomes more likely while another one shatters.
And with Yoda as his unlikely Master the apprentice learns the pace
of a life in the Force, as he will need if ever his father he should face.
And that moment comes after a rash decision to help his friends,
which nonetheless is not the moment where the story ends.
For when father and son meet for the very first time in their lives
it are the things they do not do or say, from which redemption derives.

So when the Jedi Returns for this epic battle's final round,
the space warefare has become a mere visual background.
For deep down inside Darth Vader a limit to rage has surfaced
and his hate starts melting away in the Force's loving furnace.
Although it still takes untill the very last moment in time
before this dark lord breaks the chains of his hate sublime,
in the final moment when by his love he is finally redeemed
it becomes to clear that indeed he was always more than he seemed.
What I love about this story, and the way that it ends,
it that it never gives up on the people on which the story depends.
That it is saying that the greatest triump and the greatest defeat
in the end rely on whether or not our own devils we're able to beat.
And surely this is wisdom you can find in yourself and in many a place,
and it has been expressed for a thousend generations in many different ways.

But 1977, I was eleven, awaiting the start of the movie in that theatre all alone,
and in that majestic opening sequence of A New Hope; away I was blown,
and when I saw for the first time the setting twin suns on the deserts of Tatooine,
I knew that I was getting into a story like I had before never ever seen.

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